


build a paper plane (to float to you)

by oceaes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pining Lance (Voltron), Slow Burn, Texting, kinda it's not really that slow, not too much angst its mostly happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 19:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17086304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaes/pseuds/oceaes
Summary: “It’s not like I cut myself off from all civilization.” Keith says. “Shiro’s neighbours are home—”“I don’t think you’ve ever talked to Shiro’s neighbours.”“Would it make you feel better if I introduced myself to Shiro’s neighbours?”“It would make me feel better if you had told me that you were going to be alone this winter break.” Lance grumbles lowly, leaning back until his shoulders hit the chair behind him.“I’m telling you now.”Lance rubs his hand over his face, tries not to sound frustrated. “Whyareyou telling me now?”Keith falters, thinks over his words. Lance bets he doesn’t know why he’s telling him now either. “Because I thought you should know.” He finally settles on.Because you can’t do anything about it.--In which Lance travels across 1,681 kilometers, sees the sky and the water meet for the first time, and falls in more ways than one.





	build a paper plane (to float to you)

**Author's Note:**

> I guess now that vld is over I can do whatever I want with these characters and no one can tell me to stop. This was originally supposed to be a short, self indulgent fic, but me being me, I just had to go and add plot. So now you get 20k+ words in what might be my last voltron fic. (Maybe, I might write a fix it for like. everything after s3)
> 
> I’ve been working on this fic for almost four months and I’m so happy it’s finally finished and that I get to share it with you. So, for maybe the last time, as a final huzzah to Lance’s character (who will always have some place in my heart), I’m gonna do what I do best: project onto (k)lance.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.
> 
> (title from Plans by Oh Wonder)

**build a paper plane (to float to you)**

Lance doesn’t remember his first Christmas, but he remembers all the ones that came after.

They stitch themselves into him as memories of golden wrapping paper and candid Christmas carols, and Lance is so grateful that he can hold every one of them in his palm. Take them out when he’s lonely or homesick, a little reminder that he can go _back_. That when the leaves fall and the sun rises later than he does, a plane ticket will always be there to take him home.

 _“You moved out four years ago,”_ his twin sister had said to him over the phone one year, after he mentioned how excited he was to see her. _“When are you gonna stop calling this place ‘home’?”_

 _Never,_ Lance had thought, still thinks. And maybe he isn’t talking about the place, anyways.

His _family_ is home. The people who watched him grow; grew alongside him, broke his falls and held him close when he had to hit the ground. The warmth in his chest that glows and grows whenever he’s around them, that’s home.

 _Home is not a place,_ Lance thinks, and realizes why. Places move, and places change and his story may be rooted into the sand of Varadero Beach, but sun soaked sand is carried on the tongues of gentle brushes of wind. And sand crumbles, falls away.

 _And home is not a person,_ because people come and go but rarely do they _stay._ Stay near or stay the same and that’s something he’s had to learn the hard way.

Home is a broken window that still keeps the cold away. Home is a fireplace that was forged in a forest fire. Home is an anchor that isn’t attached to a ship.

_Home is a fire lit in your throat that's wants so desperately to burn up; but instead it flickers and finds itself a home within your chest, buried beneath your ribcage, and it doesn’t burn, doesn’t bite._

_It keeps you warm._

* * *

 

**_Thursday, December 20th, 19:15. (1,681km)_ **

Lance doesn’t remember locking the door.

The logical part of his brain reminds him that every time he’s been certain he left the door unlocked thus far, he’s rushed home to find the door securely bolted, like his subconscious routinely ensures that he keys the lock shut whether he recalls it or not.

He tries to rationalize this with himself. _The door is locked, there’s nothing to worry about._ But he does worry, because besides guitar playing, pancake making and salsa dancing, worrying is what he does best.

“But are you _sure_ you double checked?” He presses his phone closer to his cheek and it makes him wonder if his urgency travels through the receiver.

“Yes, Lance I’m sure the door was locked when I left.” Keith explains for the second time. “And even if I wasn’t, no one’s staying on campus this Christmas anyways.”

“That doesn’t mean we can just leave our dorm unlocked!” He’s speaking in his Library Voice _,_ as Keith had so cleverly named it, even though he’s nowhere near a library.

 _“Your voice drops like an entire octave and twelve notches in volume whenever we enter a library.”_ Keith had explained on a particularly clear night when they had found themselves sandwiched between rows of spined pages and hours of giggles. Lance had pretended not to know what Keith was talking about. Still pretends sometimes just to tick him off.

Sometimes he pretends not to remember everything that happened next. The shoving Keith’s shoulder and the other boy dramatically flailing as he stumbled off the table he was sitting on. The exasperated sigh that Keith let out, sat on the floor next to Lance’s leg. The laughing at Keith’s pout and the not being able to breathe when that pout turned into a giggle.

Sometimes, Lance pretends that he can’t remember the exact second his heart started beating a little differently whenever Keith was around; that he can’t pinpoint it to that night.

He doesn’t pretend right now, as Keith’s sigh rings through Lance’s ear. (Maybe he shouldn’t press his phone so close after all.)

“Lance, chill. The door is locked, and you’re just going to drive yourself crazy if you keep thinking about it.” Keith is, of course, correct, with Lance currently situated in an airport halfway back to his childhood home in Cuba, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. He tugs at a loose string on his hoodie and pulls his bottom lip between his teeth.

Keith’s voice is lighter, breathier, when he speaks again and Lance almost snaps the thread he’s twisting in his fingers. “What, are you afraid someone might steal your pokémon card collection?”

And that has Lance actually laughing, a real laugh that puffs out in breathless chuckles. “Yes, that exactly. You _know_ how much they mean to me.” Keith is laughing now, too, and Lance pretends the feeling in his chest isn’t something that he’s become all too familiar with when it comes to the boy on the other end of the phone.

There’s a pause in the conversation after both of their laughter dies down, and Lance lets himself not worry for once. The door probably _is_ locked, and even if it isn’t, there’s no way for him to turn around and change that now.

_“Flight one-three-six-nine now boarding from gate four-seventeen.”_

A couple around the same age as Lance’s parents scurries past him, dragging their bright silver luggage behind them as they hastily make their way from the northeast waiting lounge to their gate. Flights have been delayed all day due to the absurd amount of people traveling in a last minute attempt to gift themselves away as their loved one’s Christmas presents. Lance smiles despite himself as the couple speaks in hushed tones about not missing their grandson’s first Christmas.

“How long until your flight again?” Keith sounds closer than before. Lance imagines him pressing his mouth right up against the microphone on his end.

Lance groans. “Little less than four hours.” It’s so much longer than he’d like to think about. Sitting alone in a crowded airport with nothing but his 79% charged phone and a carry-on suitcase to keep him company. “Remind me again why I decided a connecting red-eye flight was a good idea.”

“Saved you over a hundred bucks.” Keith’s reply came immediately and Lance groans again. “Imagine all the pokémon cards you could buy.”

“Like five of the really good ones.”

_“Flight number two-one-one-four now boarding from gate twenty eight A.”_

There’s a woman sitting behind him, noisily tapping words into her phone screen and when the seasonal music resumes it’s play over the loudspeaker— _Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow…_ —Lance tries to sync the two rhythms together.

“How’s Shiro? You guys doing anything tonight?” He shifts the conversation away from thinking about the four hours of waiting and the additional two and a half of flying that comes after.

There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, like Keith has to actually mull the question over. It gives Lance just enough time to wonder if Keith hung up.

“No, he’s actually out with Adam right now.” Keith eventually says, his tone even, as if he’s meticulously picking each word. But Lance has known Keith long enough to detect the slight drawl on his a’s, a telltale sign that he’s nervous about something.

“And they didn’t let you tag along? Or is it super confidential almost-married-people stuff?” Lance just hopes that he can gently coax whatever Keith is worrying about out of him without prying.

And maybe it’s the fact that they’re currently 1,681 kilometers apart, or maybe it’s because Keith has had to listen to Lance complain about his four hour layover in Georgia for the past week, or maybe Lance can chalk it up to a damn Christmas miracle, but for some reason, Keith opens easily. No prying or gentle coaxing or whatever he had planned to ask needed.

“They asked me to come along I just,” he pauses, then- “I didn’t want to impose.” he says decisively.

“So date night?” Lance tries to convince himself that Keith’s slightly dejected tone is the result of their connection and nothing else.

“More like date two weeks…” Which is absolutely not what Lance had been expecting at all. In fact, he’s not entirely sure he heard that correctly because it’s just too absurd for Lance to even consider being true.

“Sorry, what?” He asks because it’s _Christmas break_ and Lance is stuck at an airport in Georgia on his way home to spend it with his family, and Keith is supposed to be at his brother and future brother-in-law’s house in Michigan, spending it with _his_ family: Shiro and Adam. Who, according to Keith, are on a two week date.

“Yeah uh, they’re actually spending the holidays with Adam’s family up in Vancouver this year.” Keith sounds like a child who knows they’re about to get scolded for eating the last marshmallow.

“And where are _you_ spending it?” He doesn’t really need to ask, if _“I didn’t want to impose,”_ was anything to go off of, Lance already knows the answer, already hates it.

“At Shiro and Adam’s house.” He eventually answers and yeah, Lance was right about hating it.

“ _Alone?_ ” He’s not _shouting,_ not at all, but he’s definitely not using his Library Voice anymore.

There’s a number of reasons why Lance is not okay with this information, some of which have to do with Keith, some of which have to do with his family and none of which have to do with the feeling in his stomach. Mostly, though, they have to do with his mamá.

 _“No one should spend the holidays alone.”_ she had told him at just nine years old when his twin sister had walked into the house with a girl trailing behind her. Her chin was tucked to her chest, hands clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were as white as Christmas snow.

Dinner that night was fairly silent for a Suárez meal.

Later, as the girl got to know Lance’s siblings and Rachel recounted the story of her friend’s parent’s impending separation, his mamá had made the bed in the guest room and opened her home up to the girl.

 _“If there’s one thing I know, Leandro, it’s that I am not this girl’s home.”_ She had told him. _“But I will do anything I can to make it feel like one.”_  

Lance hopes one day someone would consider him home, too.

_A fire lit in their throat that finds itself a home within their chest, buried beneath their ribcage, keeps them warm._

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lance,” Keith says now and Lance can practically hear him rolling his eyes. Like the prospect of him being someone’s home is ridiculous. Like he already has enough home for the both of them. “I’m not alone. I’m with Kosmo.”

“So alone.” Lance concludes and _gosh_ this boy. This boy really thinks Lance will be okay with him spending the Holidays alone. “How long have you known that Shiro and Adam were gonna be out of town?” Lance doesn’t know what would be worse: that Shiro and Adam had just sprung it on Keith last minute or that Keith has had plenty of time to _not tell Lance that he was spending winter break alone._  

There’s a rumbling that fizzles through the phone that makes Lance imagine Keith shrugging on the other end. “A couple weeks.” He says it like a question and Lance has to stop his heart from beating as fast as the woman’s nails tapping her screen behind him.

“ _And you’re just telling me now?_ ” Suddenly the tentatively locked door is the last of his concerns.

“ _Yes,_ because I knew you’d make a big deal out of it.” Keith sounds resigned, like he’s imagined this conversation too many times in his head and now he’s just going through the steps.

“ _Make_ a big deal out of it? It _is_ a big deal!”

“But it’s not! I’m okay, Kosmo is here, Shiro left the fridge stocked and he gave me his Netflix password.” Keith says like it’s a proper argument, like Lance would be placated with the knowledge that Keith could spend his Christmas with John Mulaney if he really wanted to.

“That’s not the point, Mullet.” Keith scoffs at the nickname. “The point is you’re spending all of winter break on your own.” He leaves out the _again,_ but imagines Keith hears it anyways.

It’s not a secret (well, not to Lance) that Christmas for Keith had been something entirely different when he was a child. Bouncing from foster home to shelter, Keith had only really experienced a handful of Holiday Celebrations. Lance thinks that might be why he’s not too phased by the idea of spending winter break this year on his brother and soon to be brother-in-law’s couch with nothing more than some canned soups and his dog to keep him company.

“It’s not like I cut myself off from all civilization.” Keith says. “Shiro’s neighbours are home-”

“I don’t think you’ve ever talked to Shiro’s neighbours.”

“-and I have my phone—we’re talking on the phone _right now._ ”

“And I’m in a crowded airport in Georgia and you’re sitting alone on your brother’s couch in Michigan.”

Keith sighs in the same way he had when Lance had shoved him off the table in the library. “Would it make you feel better if I introduced myself to Shiro’s neighbours?”

“It would make me feel better if you had told me that you were going to be alone this winter break.” Lance grumbles lowly, leaning back until his shoulders hit the chair behind him.

“I’m telling you now.”

Lance rubs his hand over his face, tries not to sound frustrated. “Why _are_ you telling me now?”

Keith falters, thinks over his words. Lance bets he doesn’t know why he’s telling him now either. “Because I thought you should know.” He finally settles on. _Because you can’t do anything about it._

Lance can’t help but wonder what his mamá would do in this situation, what she would tell him to do. He thinks he wants to find out too much not to ask.

_“Flight number eight-four-six-six now boarding from gate six-oh-nine.”_

He decides it’s worth a shot.

“Hey Keith, buddy, I gotta go man, my phone’s about to die,” he lies, “I’ll text you when I can.”

“Okay, have fun. Say ‘hi’ to your family for me.”

“I will.” Lance hangs up.

Immediately after, his headphones are plugged in and he’s video-calling Luis.

His brother picks up on the second ring, sitting at their parents dining room table while behind him Veronica seems to be digging through the fridge. Luis is smiling in a way that reminds Lance of summertime and cherries and safety.

“Hey Leo, how’s your layover going?” Which has Lance groaning again.

“Please don’t remind me.” Though it’s hard for him to forget anyways.

The video buffers but Lance still hears him chuckle. “Fair enough. What’s up?”

Lance opens his mouth to answer but doesn’t get the chance before someone is shouting _“is that Lance?”_ right in his ear.

“Yeah it’s him!” Luis yells back and Lance sees Veronica’s head shoot up from where it’s been buried in the fridge. She hip-bumps the fridge door closed and takes the seat next to Luis at the table. Less than a second later, Marco is standing behind the two of them, waving casually at Lance through the screen.

“You need to get here fast, Lance.” Marco says seriously, though he’s grinning in a way that makes Lance’s stomach twist in an entirely different way. “I don't think I can make it another day sharing a bathroom with Rachel when you're not here.”

“Hey baby bro,” Rachel addresses Lance as she saunters into frame, squishing Veronica into Luis’s side so the three of them can fit on two chairs.

“Speak of the devil.” Marco mumbles but he’s grinning widely down at his little sister.

“I’m literally thirty minutes younger than you.” Lance points out, not for the first time in their lives and definitely not for the last.

“Still the baby.” Rachel replies, and Lance rolls his eyes.

“What’s up Leo?” Marco asks, unphased by the conversation he grew up listening to. Rachel tilts her head with inquiry.

He sighs, “I need some advice.” One of Lance’s favourite thing about having so many siblings is the support system they built with each other when they were children that they’ve carried into adulthood. Veronica’s eyebrow twitches in interest while Marco leans his elbows on the back of Luis’s chair.

His mamá is the one to speak next, both his sisters moving to stand while his mamá takes a seat in their chair. “Advice on what?”

Lance can feel the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. “I think you guys can pretty much guess.” There’s a chorus of _oh_ ’s and _ah_ ’s and at some point everyone is nodding in unison.

“It’s Keith isn’t it.”

“How’d you guess?”

...

 _“So he’s completely alone?”_ Rachel sounds just as exasperated as Lance was. It’s moments like this where he can really tell they’re twins. “I swear, Leo, I’ll book a flight to Michigan right now-”

“Raquel,” their mamá cuts her off. “Let him finish.”

“Yeah,” Lance says, “he’s alone.”

“Well, we can’t have that.” Marco says because he remembers, they all remember, the little girl who spent one Christmas with them before her mother whisked her away to America following a messy divorce and an even messier custody battle. They all remember what their mamá had told them.

“No we cannot.” Their mamá says. “Leandro, I understand your confusion, but I think you know what I’m going to tell you, and I think you’ve already thought of it yourself.”

He has. Ever since Keith had dropped the bomb that Shiro and Adam were in Canada, Lance has been weighing his options, has considered the possibility of turning around and flying right back to where Keith is. He just doesn’t want to leave his family. He needs to hear that it’s the right thing to do from the people who have always been the right thing to him.

“What do I do? I can’t _not_ come home.”

“Lance,” Luis says, “You know what to do.”

“As much as we would love to spend the holidays with you-” Veronica starts.

“And we would love that more than anything.” Rachel interjects.

“-I’m pretty sure I speak for all of us when I say that I think Keith would, too.” She finishes as if Rachel hadn’t said anything. His mamá smiles gently at him, like she knows that he agrees but can’t bring himself to say it.

“I miss you guys so much.” He says because he does. And he can’t imagine not seeing them again until Spring break.

“We miss you too, Leo, but Keith needs someone now. And you can fix that. Who would we be if we were to hold you from that?”

Lance loves his family more than he has words for. “I’m gonna call you guys every day until break is over.”

“Please don’t.” Rachel say, but she’s smiling, and Lance can tell that she misses him just as much. “I couldn’t handle hearing you talk every day for two weeks.”

“We shared a room for like eighteen years.”

“That’s why I’m so sure.” They all laugh, but Lance hates that he’s going to miss this. That they’re all going to laugh without him this year.

“Go rebook your flight, Leandro.”

Lance nods. He will.

...

Lance moved away for school when he was eighteen. As the youngest of the family (by thirty minutes) he was one of the last to move out, so it was the easiest for him to grasp the concept of living somewhere else. He had watched his brothers and sisters build a home up from the ground, and he was excited to do it for himself.

 _“Keep your head up,”_ Veronica had told him, _“it’ll help.”_ It didn’t help.

Lance moved onto residence in his first year of University, so he had absolutely no say in _who_ he’d be moving in with. He opened his dorm room door for the first time to see a tall, lanky, mullet headed boy with the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen standing in the middle of the room. Lance wondered why it had taken him so long to move out.

“Hey, you must be Lance.” Tall, lanky, mullet said, reaching out his hand for Lance to shake.

Only after he gripped the boy’s hand did Lance realize how sweaty his were.

“I’m Keith.” Mullet said, “I guess were roommates.”

And Lance, stupidly, really really stupidly, had smiled distantly, nodded his head and said, “I never thought I’d room with a guy who had a mullet.”

Keith stared at him with his eyes blown wide, startled by the bluntness of Lance's introduction. Lance had barely opened his mouth to apologize when Keith doubled over with laughter.

Keith had found it hilarious, laughing so hard he nearly fell off of his own feet. Lance found it less so, apologizing profusely—“I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I have nothing against expression, especially through appearance, I’m not that guy. Shit, I’m sorry.”

Keith was laughing too hard to respond.

They both find it ridiculous now, four years of living together later. But Keith has made it clear that he’ll never forget that the first words Lance ever said to him were _“I never thought I’d room with a guy who had a mullet.”_

(“Best Man speech,” Keith calls it, “perfect story for your wedding.”

Lance makes a note to not let Keith give the Best Man speech at his wedding.)

“Come on,” Keith had said once his laughter had died down enough for him to speak He clapped Lance on the shoulder as he made his way to the door that Lance just walked through, “Let’s go meet our neighbours.”

It wasn’t Lances home—not at the time at least. But it was a start. The bricks. Now it was his turn to put them together.

...

“Sign here,” the woman behind the desk says, sliding a piece of paper across the table between them. Lance signs in three places.

“Thank you,” the woman says, not bothering to look up at Lance.

“No problemo,” Lance replies, attempting to smile at her. She ignores him.

She sighs deeply, tapping something into her computer before saying, “okay, you’re cancellation went through.” She finally looks at Lance to give him a tight smile. “You are no longer booked for flight three-nineteen from Georgia to Cuba.”

“Thank you,” Lance says, grinning.

He finds his way back to the sitting room he had been in before, pulling his phone out to Google last minute flight deals.

It’s only now that Lance realizes he should have done this _before_ cancelling his flight home; because with the sudden influx of last-minute travellers and the short notice, the earliest flight Lance can book leaves on the twenty-eighth.

Three days too late.

Lance is in a dilemma. So he weighs his options again: book a flight that would get him to Keith three days after Christmas, try and see if there’s another flight to Cuba that he could squeeze himself onto or stay stranded in Georgia where his only companions would be the stars and probably some uncomfortable motel bed.

Unsurprisingly, none of these seem especially appealing to Lance.

So sits down on one of the uncomfortable airport seats and he does what he always does when he’s in a predicament.

He calls Hunk.

“Holy shit, dude.”

“Yeah.”  

“And you’re sure you can’t get a flight sooner?”

“Positive.”

 _“Flight number eight-twenty-four now boarding from gate three-sixty-one.”_ A boy around Lance’s age makes his way to the door and Lance swallows the doubt building in his throat. Keith needs him far more than he needs to be in Varadero.  

“Damn Lance, you’ve been talking about how excited to go home you’ve been for the past _month.”_

“I _know._ And I want to go home so badly,” he really does, wishes he could split himself in half and send one to Cuba and one to Keith. Maybe he’d only have to pay for one full plane ticket.

“Lance, I know you care a lot about Keith, but it’s _Christmas.”_

“I know. That’s why I’m going to him.” Hunk seems to understand with that alone, because he doesn’t push it.

“Alright, buddy I’m gonna suggest something you may or may not like, but it might be your only shot.”

Lance pulls at the loose string of his hoodie again, suddenly anxious of the prospect of yet another undesirable option. “I already don’t like where this is going.”

Hunk chuckles and it’s enough to make Lance smile, some of his nerves dying on the spot. “I didn’t think you would, but just hear me out.”

Lance purses his lips but doesn’t say anything. Any option that wasn’t one of the three he was left with after cancelling his flight was probably his best option, anyways. “Hit me,” he says.

“Rent a car.”

A _car_ , really, Lance should have thought of that earlier. Most people won’t be commuting by roads to their Christmas destination, all set on wings and chairs with no leg room and tiny screens with tinier movies that no one has ever heard of. But a _car_ with a wheel and a gas pedal that Lance could press so far into he might as well be flying, Lance can’t believe it slipped his mind.

“You, my friend, are a genius.”

“I try.”

...

Lance isn’t the most fond of driving.  

His first car was a hand-me-down from Luis. It was blue (or at least it was at one point,) had a dent in the passenger door and a stain on the backseat. Lance never discovered where the stain had come from, but on particularly sleepless nights, when his insomnia demanded him to be awake, Lance would spend his late nights (early mornings) scrubbing at the stain. It lightened eventually, but was always still there.

He enjoyed sitting in it more than he did driving it around.

He isn’t a nervous driver, like his brother, more of an overly cautious driver. He knows where he’s vulnerable but he can’t protect it. That scares him more than he likes to admit.  

He much prefers buses and trains and bicycles, either no control or complete and utter control with a flinch of his body. Car’s are unpredictable, especially ones that belong to other people.

Admittedly, he’s a _good_ driver. ( _“Attentive,”_ his old driving instructor had told him. _“And very fast reflexes. That’s good. That’ll keep you safe.”_ And at least until now, it has.) His spotless record is enough for him to be able to rent a car. Red, with a dent in the drivers side. He doesn’t really care.

It’ll get him to Keith in seventeen hours.

He thinks he might enjoy sitting in this car more than driving it, too. The chair is stuck a little too reclined for Lance’s liking and it smells vaguely of cigarettes and stale air fresheners, but he can adapt. He twists the seatbelt between frostbitten fingertips and reaches into his pocket to retrieve his phone.

Keith’s name is the first one in his contacts, saved affectionately under _“and they were [Roommate]s”_. Keith had changed it to that one night while they were sprawled across Lance's bed, legs hanging off bed frames, tongues struggling to keep up with running away thoughts.

He had changed Lance’s contact name in his phone to _“oh my god they were [Roommate]s”_ and Lance had to physically smother the feeling in his chest with the pillow Keith was lying on.

He smiles at the memory, opening their conversation to retell the events of the previous three hours for the third time.

Lance wonders how Keith will react to the news that he cancelled his flight home; that he rented a car and plans to drive seventeen hours over the span of a day and a half; that he’d run the journey if he had to, just to be with him.

 _“Don’t do it.”_ Keith would tell him, because he’s _Keith_ and he waited until Lance was over a thousand and a half kilometers away from him to tell him that he was alone this Christmas. Until he was certain that Lance couldn’t do anything to change it.

But if there’s one thing Lance is good at besides guitar playing, pesto sauce making, salsa dancing and worrying, it’s baffling Keith.

 _“I knew you’d make a big deal out of it.”_ Keith had said, and fine, maybe Lance _is_ , and maybe that’s what Keith is trying to avoid, and maybe that’s why his fingers hesitate over the touchpad keyboard of his phone. He can’t tell Keith that he’s coming back. Not after he emphatically explained all the reasons why he was alright. All the reasons why he would be alright all break without Lance (or anyone else).

Lance _knows_ him, which is something he’s proud to say. He knows that Keith would pester him relentlessly until he agreed to book another flight back home.

 _“They’re your family.”_ Lance can almost imagine him saying, guilt coating his every syllable.

 _“So are you.”_ Lance would say back, because, really, he is. He’s the person Lance has come home to for the past four, years, and the person who knows the exact temperature to set the thermostat, and the first person Lance came out to besides his siblings. By all and every means, they _are_ family, at least to Lance they are.

He won’t let Keith talk him out of this.

Which means he can’t tell Keith he’s doing it.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[22:53]_ gettin on plane now

 _[22:53]_ wont have wifi for like 3hrs

 _[22:53]_ ill text you when i can

The key feels heavy in his hand when he slots it into the ignition, his portal to Keith dangling from the side of the steering wheel, a bright green keychain with the rental companies name on it fastened to the end of it. _Altea Rental, call for assistance: 404 - xxx - xxxx._

Lance’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[22:54]_ Okay

He twists the key.

* * *

 

**_Friday, December 21st, 01:24. (1,496km)_ **

Lance drives until it’s unsafe for him to continue. Not that he’d be particularly opposed to the idea of driving straight through, but he’s been awake for almost twenty straight hours. He figures Keith would rather him show up when he’s not about to pass out, anyways.

So he drives in circles until he finds a motel with cheap enough rooms for him to rent for the night. The one he settles on is on the corner of a busy street, right across from a gas station.

Blue and red Christmas lights are strung up from the rooftops of the building, shining and catching on the reflection of the stars, and it’s not home, not by a long stretch, but it’s enough for Lance.

He bumps into his neighbours for the night, a group of teenagers not much younger than Lance, all shoving each other’s shoulders playfully while a trail of water drips from one of the girl’s long hair. They’re all soaking wet, and Lance doesn’t really have to guess why.

Lance smiles at them, wonders if he looked and sounded just like that when he was eighteen.

Keith and Lance’s neighbours his freshman year were by far the best neighbours Lance could’ve asked for. A tall, friendly, incredibly intelligent guy named Hunk, and a sweet, stunningly gorgeous, honours student named Allura.

Hunk lived in the dorm across the hall with a roommate named Pidge, though she never seemed to be around when the rest of them were hanging out. And Allura lived beside them, roomed with a girl named Romelle who worked the night shift at their nearby 24 hour diner.

The four of them—Lance, Keith, Hunk and Allura—had grown immensely close by Halloween. Often times the four of them would wander around campus together, and on days where they were all free of class, they would wander the city.

“Romelle’s working tonight, so I have it free.” Allura had said when Lance had asked her about her plans for the evening.

“Perfect!” Lance exclaimed. _“You,”_ he pointed to Allura, “are coming with _us.”_ he said, gesturing to the three boys scattered around the floor of his and Keith’s dorm room.

“I am?” Allura said, raising an eyebrow at Lance, “where exactly are we going?”

“Lance is gonna take us to the pool here!” Hunk had said, throwing a piece of popcorn at Keith who attempted to catch it in his mouth. It hit him in the forehead instead. “Isn’t that awesome?”

“There’s a pool here?” Allura asked. “I’ve never seen it.”

“It’s specialty use only.” Keith had said. “But this,” he patted Lance’s admission FOB that was resting on Lance’s leg, “will get us all in.”

“And we’re allowed to use it?” Allura inquired, “like, Lance is just allowed to let whoever he wants into the pool whenever he wants?”

“Oh, Lura, always the voice of reason,” Lance had said, dramatically stretching his arm over her shoulders. “Of course I’m not allowed to let other people in whenever I want.”

Allura’s head bobbed in small nods, her lips pulled into a line while she said, “but we’re doing it anyways.”

“We’re doing it anyways.”

The kids scramble passed Lance, smooshing against the wall of the hallway to scurry into their room. One of them smiles at Lance, a tall, skinny boy with dark skin and hair. It’s like looking in the mirror. (If the mirror was also a time machine.)

The carpets in Lance’s motel room are some pattern of green and red splashes and Lance thinks it’s oddly seasonal. There’s a bed and a bathroom and an armchair pushed into the corner of the room that reminds Lance of the one that his abuela used to have.

Lance tucks himself under the covers, not bothering to change his clothing but bothering to wash his face. The blankets are pulled up to his chin to keep the December chill away, but just looking out the window beside his bed, he can feel the breeze that swirls outside, looking for a way in.

He turns around.

For someone who was so tired mere minutes ago, he’s finding it near impossible to fall asleep.

He twists again, the sheets rubbing and catching against his (Luis’s) hoodie uncomfortably. He groans, throwing his arm over his eyes. This isn’t going well.

A car speeds down the street in front of Lance’s window, he thinks it sounds like the wind outside knocking on the glass, asking him to let it in.

Instead, he reaches over to the armchair and unplugs his phone.

 _01:36_ blinks back at him, but that’s not what he’s looking for.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[01:37]_ finally settled in. miss you

Neither of which are lies.

He doesn’t expect Keith to answer, it being one in the morning after all, but when he rolls over to plug his fully charged phone back in, it vibrates against his fingers and he nearly drops it.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[01:38]_ Miss you too

 _[01:38]_ How was the flight?

 _[01:38]_ alright ig

 _[01:39]_ few bumps in the road but i lived bitch

Which isn’t a lie either. If anything it’s more truthful than Keith probably thinks it is. Aside from the hour where he didn’t have a plane ticket to Cuba or a rental car to Michigan, he had driven over a couple patches of ice and scarcely avoided some pretty sever potholes. Nothing major, but enough for his heart to feel like it was kicking his lungs into his ribcage.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[01:39]_ Turbulence?

 _[01:39]_ something like that

 _[01:42]_ hey keith

 _[01:42]_?

 _[01:42]_ call?

Not even a minute later, his phone is ringing.

“Hey,” Keith sounds like he’s using his own Library Voice.

“Hi,” Lance says back, breathless, like the wind outside had crept in while he wasn’t looking and was now bending over his tongue.

“What’s up?” Keith asks.

Lance shrugs his shoulder into the bed. “Just wanted to talk.”

It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for the pair, with both of them having full course loads, half of the time they’d talk on the phone just so that they could decide what to have for dinner that night.  

“How’s your family?” Keith sounds like he’s smiling.

“They’re-” he pauses, his throat twisting. How are they? Are they having fun without him? He hopes they are. “My mom made five different types of cookies because the kids couldn't decide which one was their favourite.” She probably did, considering it's what she did the year before.

“Yeah?” Which is what Keith says whenever he just wants Lance to keep talking. _Yeah, yeah, yeah._

“And Marco and Rachel are never allowed to share a bathroom ever again.”

Keith laughs, which sounds more like a heavy exhale in between two laughs. Like a _heh_ with a breath separating the two h’s. And _gosh,_ it makes Lance’s stomach twist. Keith’s smile, while no longer a rare sight to Lance, still manages to make his lungs malfunction and his intestines ring together.

He doesn't want to think about why.

“They didn’t use your bathroom, did they?”

 _I sincerely hope not._ “No,” he grins,  “I would have killed them.”

“You’re right. They wouldn’t have any room for any of their things, anyways.”

“Hey!” Lance squacks indignantly. “It’s not my fault everything has a place and I like to keep it that way.”

“So I’ve learned.” Keith laughs, that deep rumbly chest laugh that reminds Lance of skating rinks and frosty fingertips and falling.

A year and a half into rooming together, Keith had found out that Lance had never been ice skating.

“I grew up in the Caribbean, where the fuck would I have gotten ice to skate on?” Lance had said and Keith told him, with an adorable glint in his eyes and car keys in his hands that he hadn’t _lived_ if he hadn’t been ice skating.

So, a hour later, that’s where the pair found themselves. At the local ice rink in rented hockey skates as Lance hobbled around the reception area.

“You’re not even on the ice yet.”

“Why the fuck are there knives attached to my feet?”

“They’re blades, Lance.”

“And why the fuck are there knives attached to _your_ feet? Am I just supposed to trust that you won’t kick me in the face?”

They moved slowly in laps around the rink, allowing Lance to dip his toes in the water, try to shake off his sea legs. When Keith insisted Lance try moving without a strangling death grip on Keith’s arm, Lance’s legs slipped from under him and he graciously, in a flail of long limbs and hand knitted scarf, fell on his butt.

That was the first time Lance had heard Keith’s rumbly chest laugh, over the sound of children giggling and people gliding passed them in whirls of ice shavings.

Keith’s rumble of a laugh, Lance has since realized, isn’t the laugh he uses when he finds something funny. It’s the one he uses when he’s _happy._

Lance had watched it vibrate through his body, head thrown back with his eyes being swallowed by his cheeks and he fell a lot that day, but this was the only time he felt like he was _falling._

“I’m okay, you know.” Keith says through the phone, and the seriousness of his tone startles Lance a little.

“What?” he asks dumbly, because he can’t think of any other way to respond.

“I know you’re worried about me,” Keith explains, “but you don’t have to be. I’m okay.”

Lance breathes slowly, because he _really_ can’t think of a way to respond. How can he say _I know you’re okay on your own, but I don’t want you to think alone is all you can be_? How can he say _I don’t want you to_ have _to be okay on your own, because I don’t want you to_ feel _like you’re on your own_? How can he tell him that he’s driving back because _no one should spend the holidays alone_.

He can’t.

“Okay.” Lance says, because he has to say something.

Keith shifts or rolls over or throws his phone at a wall, Lance isn’t too sure, all he knows is that his ear is assaulted with waves of static that crackle through the receiver.

“Ow, dude. What are you doing?” Lance asks, nose scrunching as he pulls the phone away from his face, squishing it into the pillow under his ear.

“Sorry,” Keith sounds like he’s pulled his phone away from his mouth too. “Kosmo just fuckin’ jumped me.”

“Probably because he misses me.”

“Oh it’s definitely because he misses you.”

The two of them laugh and Lance can’t help but notice how _right_ it sounds. For them to be laughing together. For Keith to be laughing because of Lance. His stomach does that thing it does every time he pulls that sound out of Keith.

“He's not the only one, y'know.” Keith says, the lightness in his tone shifting to one Lance has only heard a handful of times.

Once, on the anniversary of his father’s death, after the two had come home from visiting his grave. They had sat on the floor of their dorm room, backs pressed against Lance’s bed shoulders slumped together, as Keith recalled—in just above a whisper—all the memories he had of his father. All the memories he still has. (All the memories he’ll ever have.)

The other was in the middle of a particularly homesick night. Insomnia had tugged Lance’s eyelashes to his eyebrows and pulled him out of dreamless sleeps and into dreamful silence. Keith had found him curled into himself, eyes somewhere beyond the window above their beds, fixated on something and nothing and everything in between him and the moon.

“He’s not the only one, what?” Lance asks after he reminds himself how to breathe.

“Kosmo,” Keith says and Lance imagines him smiling. “He’s not the only one who misses you.”

And really, that shouldn’t make Lance’s heart clench the way it does. He knows Keith misses him. Hell, they had texted it to each other right before they got on the phone. But there’s something different about hearing it from Keith directly. Something about the fact that Keith thought it was so important to let Lance _know_ that he misses him. Something about how the mood shifted when Lance wasn’t looking. From the usual joking tone that they use when they’re on the phone with each other, to something else, something warmer.   

Lance wonders if maybe that’s just a result of the fire that’s built its home in his stomach, dancing and so so awake whenever Keith is around.

Lance misses him, too.

“Don’t be like that, Mullet.” Lance jokes because he’s afraid of what he’ll say if he doesn’t. “We saw each other this morning.” His voice tapers off into a whisper by the end of his sentence.

“Yesterday morning.”

“Same thing. Neither of us have slept between then and now.”

“Hmm.”

“Keith?”

“Hmm.”

“Are you falling asleep?”

“No,” he doesn’t sound very convincing.

“Do you wanna hang up?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he says, because he doesn’t want to hang up either.

“What are you thinking about?” Keith asks.

What is he thinking about? Red and blue Christmas lights, the beach, the feeling in his stomach that won’t seem to dissipate. He’s thinking about the lock on his and Keith’s dorm room door and the wind outside his window that keeps demanding Lance to keep it warm.  

“I wish it was snowing.” He settles on, because maybe then the wind would be less lonely out there.

“In Cuba?”

“Outside.”

“Yeah, Lance it’d be a real winter wonder if it was snowing _in_ side.”

Lance laughs against his phone and he can hear it bounce around its insides before shooting across 1,496 kilometers and out of Keith’s speaker.

“It’s snowing here.” Keith says.

Lance pulls the blankets up to his chin. “Tell me about it.”

“Tell you about snow?”

“Sure. Or tell me about the canned soup you had for dinner or the cabinet in the kitchen that won’t close or anything, just tell me about it.”

“We really do need to fix that cabinet. Lord knows Adam and Shiro won’t do it if we don’t.”

Lance laughs again but not because it’s funny, more because he knows that it’s true. They’ve lived in that house for almost two years, and ever since their first day there, when Lance and Keith had come over to help them shovel boxes from truck to tile floor, Shiro has been talking about fixing that very cabinet.

“... it’s fluffy.” Keith says when their soft chuckles flicker off into silence.

“What, the cabinet?”

“The snow.”

“Oh.”

“Close your eyes. Imagine it.”

Lance does.

“It’s the light kind that sticks to everything and piles high because of all the air between it. Can you picture it?”

Lance opens his eyes and then he doesn’t have to picture it anymore, because when the streetlight catches on the glass of his window, he can see. Outside, swirling alongside the wind are little flecks of white, glowing in red and blue Christmas lights.

It’s snowing here too.

Like falling red and blue stars.

_“Can you picture it?”_

“Yeah,” Lance says, “I think I can.”

...

Lance has only seen snow a handful of times.

Growing up in the Caribbean, white Christmases were only lyrics in Christmas songs and in films that would play on _The Movie Channel_ during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Lance used to sit on the carpet in front of the television, all of his siblings piling high on the couch, sometime long after their bedtime. They’d watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ until none of them could keep their eyes open anymore, their eyelashes like weights pulling their eyelids shut and pushing them into dreams of frosty windows and cherry red noses.

To this day, Lance has never seen the whole film all the way through.

He has, however, seen enough of it to know there’s snow in it. Sad, wet, abrasive snowflakes made of stone that cloud the protagonist— _George Bailey’s_ —thoughts as much as it clouds the water that crashes beneath him.

Lance didn’t know what to make of it at age seven.

Lance doesn’t know what to make of it at age twenty two.  

A car skids passed him on his left, and it takes everything in him not to slam on the breaks, knowing the car behind him is far too close for that to end in anything but disaster. His breathing is shaky and his hands are sweating in their deathgrip on the steering wheel. Another car’s tire squeaks against the lane beside him and Lance has to hold his breath to keep his hands steady.

_“Can you picture it?”_

Maybe he should have kept to just that. Imagining.

What Lance had failed to take into consideration last night was that snow, while beautiful and mesmerizing to watch fall from the inside of a window, is heavy. And thick. And really fucking slippery. Especially to someone who isn’t experienced in driving though it.

Lance had hoped to do the majority of the travelling today, had mapped out an entire plan that, if followed, would get him to Shiro and Adam’s house—to Keith—by the afternoon of the 22nd. But, of course, luck had other plans for him.

Plans that include falling balls of ice and radio stations that only play Christmas music. Plans that get him to Keith later than he had hoped.

“Fuck,” he breathes, narrowly avoiding driving over a patch of ice. This is nothing like _It’s a Wonderful Life._

 _“You’re listening to Blaytz Radio, here with your four o’clock traffic and weather report…”_ Lance groans. He doesn’t remember it getting so late. _“Heavy snowfall all along the east coast. At least ten centimeters and still falling.”_

“Yep,” Lance mutters to himself, “I can see that.”

_“Looks like most main roads are backed up pretty good, maybe look for alternate routes that avoid highways.”_

“Yep,” Lance mutters a little louder, “can’t do that.”

 _“Now, back to the music,”_ the radio host says. “ _Aaaand The Line is Alive. Hello, this is Blaytz Radio…”_

Lance tunes it out.

His original plan had him halfway back to Michigan by now, nine hours into his drive. He’s moved less than half as far as he thought he would, ice and snow and people and _cars that have already crashed_ littering the sides of the roads.

He just hopes that the snow stops falling and starts melting by tomorrow.

 _“And now,”_ the radio host says, far too chipper for the day Lance is having. He imagines George Bailey speaking into the microphone at the radio studio—happy George Bailey, George Bailey in the first half of the film, the George Bailey that Lance remembers watching before falling asleep—it makes him laugh.

He guesses he’s Mr. Potter, then.

_“Here’s ‘When Christmas Comes to Town’ from The Polar Express.”_

Lance smiles. He hasn’t seen that film in ages. It used to play on the same channel as _It’s A Wonderful Life,_ late enough for Lance and his siblings to watch but early enough so that they could always catch the ending.

_“The best time of the year, when everyone comes home.”_

_Home._ Lance tries not to think about home, about _everyone comes home,_ because _he’s_ not coming home, and he doesn’t like to think about how everyone else is anyways. He wonders what everyone is doing at home without him. Fighting over bathrooms and writing shitty Christmas medleys, probably. Lance never thought he’d miss fighting over a bathroom.

_“With all this Christmas cheer, it’s hard to be alone.”_

And, really, it’s that simple. The whole reason he isn’t included in _everyone_ this year. Because Keith isn’t either. Keith is the _alone,_ so Lance can’t be the _everyone._ Simple, really.

When he really thinks about it, he doesn’t think he needs to be, anyways.

...

The first time Lance had Denny’s pancakes, he cried.

Not because of the pancakes specifically, but Keith describes the memory as _“you took one single bite of your giant stack of pancakes and just started wailing.”_

Neither of them are sure if they were tears of joy or distaste, but Keith is certain they cascaded down Lance’s face like waterfalls. He was afraid they’d ruin the pancakes if Lance kept it up.

Lance doesn’t remember the incident, swears it never happened.

But then again, Lance doesn’t remember much of the rest of that day either.

He had been bed ridden, ill with some sort of flu that attacked his stomach and made him hungry almost never. He had lived a week almost entirely off of broth and water, his first real meal being the pancakes that Keith brought home after his last class of the day.

Lance must not have realized how hungry he was until he actually ate something.

He thinks he might, just maybe, believe that he burst into tears that day. Because when he finally (finally) gets something in his stomach, at six in the evening after driving the whole day, he understands past Lance’s spontaneous sobbing situation.

The pancakes are exactly the same as he remembers. Thick, doughy, covered in syrup that’s all sugar.

 _And Lance wept,_ he thinks, and smiles.

His shoulder is pressed up against a window, the cold from outside ebbing away from where his arm meets the glass. He shivers anyway. The sun is setting, casting a grey haze across the streets and the barren trees, all covered in thick sheets of bright white. The snow has stopped falling (for now) and Lance hopes it stays that way for just a little longer. Just until he reaches Michigan.

Just until he reaches Keith.

His waitress passes by, placing a mug of hot chocolate covered in frothy whipped cream on the table next to his arm. He smiles at her before taking a big swig. It’s sweet, and warm and it reminds Lance of his first winter at University.

“Keith,” Lance had said, climbing onto Keith’s bed in the middle of some November night, “wake the fuck up, Keith.”

The massive pile of blankets groaned lowly, a head of black hair peeking out from the top. “What do you want, Lance? It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s _snowing.”_ Lance had said, bouncing excitedly.

“It snows every year.” Keith rolled his eyes and his body away from Lance.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t snow in Cuba every year.” Keith seemed to be interested in that. He pulled the blankets down from his face, tucking them under his chin and staring at Lance through the darkness.

“Are you telling me you’ve never seen snow before?”

Lance nodded.

“Okay, fuck it,” Keith had said, throwing his twenty three blankets off of him and bounding towards his closet. “We’re going outside, grab your coat.”

They ran and fell around in the snow until Lance couldn’t feel his fingers. It was colder than he had thought it’d be. Little flakes of the clouds falling down to kiss him in frozen touches to the cheek. When neither of them had the energy to be outside anymore, they clambered back up to their dorm, and Lance made them hot chocolate.

Keith pretended not to notice when half of his blankets went missing the next night.

Lance is smiling to himself, shovelling another bite of pancake into his mouth when his phone buzzes in his pocket.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:04]_ Gordon ramsay or keith kogane?

Attached is a picture of what Lance thinks is mashed potatoes and some tomato soup.

Suddenly Lance’s too sweet pancakes seem like the most delicious thing he’s has ever tasted.

Keith isn’t a _bad_ cook. Not necessarily. Sure, Lance usually does the cooking in the house, on nights where he doesn’t have class or piles of pages to study. And when Keith attempts to cook, he usually ends up asking Lance for help after fifteen minutes, but his dishes are edible, sometimes even good.

This is not one of those times.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:04]_ that looks like it came out of an unspecified number of cans

 _[18:05]_ And What About It.gif

Lance chuckles, tucks his chin into the neck of his hoodie in a bashful attempt to hide his smile.

_Who are you even hiding from, Lance?_

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:05]_ hey look at that

 _[18:05]_ were eating dinner together

 _[18:06]_ Domestic aasholes

 _[18:06]_ Even in different countries

Lance takes another bite and chews it slowly. _Different countries._ To Keith, they’re in different countries. To Lance, it almost feels like they’re in different timelines.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:07] ugh_ roommate icons

 _[18:07]_ whatd you do today

 _[18:08]_ Nothing really

 _[18:08]_ Its so fucking cold outside i tried to take kosmo for a walk and my fingers almost fell off

 _[18:08]_ o shit

 _[18:08]_ are you okay?

 _[18:08]_ Yeah im fine

 _[18:09]_ Did you take nadia and sylvio skateboarding today?

Keith is well aware that Lance’s niece and nephew are his favourite people in the world. (Well, _two_ of his favourite people in the world.) Lance remembers talking Keith’s ear off right after he booked his flight about all the things he wanted to do with the two of them when he got home. He hadn’t thought Keith was even listening to him, let alone that he would _remember_ almost a month later.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:10]_ nah

 _[18:10]_ i drove around a bit today

He replies, because it’s the only thing he can say that isn’t a complete lie.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:10]_ i forgot how pretty this place was

Nevermind the fact that the east coast is less pretty and more stressful when it’s covered in piles of snow that Lance has to drive through. It’s still inexplicably mesmerizing to drive through falling flecks of white that drift and float before sticking to the ground and eyelashes and sweaters and everything else .

_Like falling stars._

Lance has never seen a falling star, but if he had to guess, he thinks they’d look like snow.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:11]_ Yknow you still have to take me there someday

_[18:11] I havent forgotten_

Lance feels the window heat up under his shoulder, then realizes that it’s not the window, but himself that’s been set on fire. The song echoing throughout the restaurant changes, and Lance tries to silence his heartbeat pounding in his ears enough to hear the violins. _Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas._

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:11]_ oh i havent forgotten either

 _[18:12]_ im definitely taking you to varadero beach with me someday

 _[18:12]_ You better

Lance had promised Keith he’d take him home to see the place he grew up almost a lifetime ago, it seems.

Lance’s second year at university—and second year of living with Keith—ensured him a spot in the astrology program that was mandatory for his undergrad. He was looking forward to it, honestly. He had always been fascinated with what existed beyond what he could see. Keith, apparently, felt the same way. Keith was in his third year, but he had taken the astrology course Lance was in the year prior.

“Iverson’s an ass,” Keith said when Lance first brought it up. The the two of them were attempting to make pizza for dinner together in their toaster oven. “Just lay low, hand your shit in. You’ll be fine.” Keith smiled at him from across the countertop and Lance thought he might have to relearn how to breathe on his own again.

They burned the pizza. Then they laughed it off, scraped the burnt cheese off the top, and ate the leftover toppings while sitting on the counter.

“...and so now I know how to make pizza.” Lance finished with a wide smile. “Or, uh, not,” he decides, looking at the burnt crust cooling next to the toaster.

“I mean,” Keith said, knocking their knees together, “ _that,”_ he gestured to the crust, “wasn’t your fault. You said yourself you can only make really good pizza when your sister isn’t helping you.”

“Oh you’re my sister now? Raquel what did you do to your hair?” He gasped dramatically. The both of them dissolving into fits of laughter.

“You gotta take me back to Varadero sometime.”

“Yeah, maybe my abuela can teach you how to make pizza, too.”

“I’m serious.”

“Me too.”

Lance doesn’t let himself think about what that means. Taking Keith back home, watching Keith meet his parents, his grandparents. Watching Keith meet the water. Watching Keith. It makes his heart stutter.

It’s this, Lance realizes, that made Lance want to even drive back to Michigan in the first place, that steers the car for him, swerves around ice when he’s not looking, keeps him upright enough so that he doesn’t trip and fall over himself. Like a falling star, like floating snowflakes. This, Lance realizes, that makes everything about not going home, about too-sweet pancakes and frostbitten fingers, worth it.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

_[18:13]_ <3

 _[18:13]_ <3

* * *

 

**_Saturday, December 22nd, 07:23 (1,030km)_ **

Lance is not a morning person.

His twin sister, on the other hand, is. Which wouldn’t have been so much of a problem if they didn’t share a room for their entire childhood. She would wake him up for school by jumping on him in bed, dressed and ready for the day. It was fine, until the brief period in time when she was taller than him.

“Wake _up,_ Leandro.” Rachel had said one day, flopping over him. He tried to roll her off. “We’re going to be late for school.”

“Yeah,” Lance had said, throwing an arm out to try and swat her off of him. “That’s kinda the goal.”

She’d poke him in the shoulder until he rolled out of bed.

It wasn’t like that his first two years of university. He set alarms an hour ahead of his classes, sometimes he would wake up before his alarm, and he’d use the time to go over his notes.

“Keener,” Veronica had called him. Lance thought of himself more as prepared.

By his third year, he had given up on waking up for morning classes.

“Lance,” Keith would say flopping across him the way his sister had when they were kids. Keith was also a morning person. Lance couldn’t escape them. “Time to wake up.”

“Or,” Lance would retort, “I could continue to sleep.”

He would poke Lance in the shoulder until he rolled out of bed.

Rachel had taught him to do that when she came to visit during their reading break. Lance still hasn’t forgiven her for it.

Needless to say, Lance isn’t too fond of waking up at seven in the morning to drive in a straight line for eight hours, held up by icy hurdles on the highway. The one and only perk of it being that he knows his sister will be up, too.

“Hello?”

“Hola, Raquel.”

“Lance!” She sounds happy. It makes Lance happy, too. “Wait,” she says, “am I dreaming? Is Lance Suárez actually awake before eight?” She laughs through the phone and tugs on his heart. It reminds Lance of when they were kids, lively and energetic and _together._ He misses her so much.

“I never thought I’d see the day.” She says when her laughter subsides.

“Neither did I,” Lance says honestly.

“So, how’s my favourite little brother?” She asks,

 _By thirty minutes,_ Lance thinks. “I’m okay.” he says instead, and he means it.

“That’s great,” Rachel says, “how’s the trip going?”

“Okay,” Lance shrugs, “it hasn’t been so bad.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be,” she says, then “what’s up?”

“What do you mean?” He asks because he honestly doesn’t know. Nothing’s up, he just wanted to talk to her.

“You’re talking in that way that means you’ve been thinking too much about something.”

“What?”

“Don’t even try with me, Leo, I know that voice. Fuck, I _have_ that voice.” He knows what voice she’s talking about.

“I just,” he inhales deeply, he should have known he wouldn’t get anything passed her. “I need some advice.”

She gasps dramatically through the phone and Lance has to keep himself from rolling his eyes “Leandro Alejandro Suárez,” she draws out the first syllable of every word. “Are you asking _me_ for advice?”

“Like I don’t every other time I need help.”

Rachel laughs at that, probably because it’s true. They come to each other with every issue they have, have been since they were children. “What’s up?” she asks again, this time more serious, this time she knows he’ll respond seriously.

“I, uh,” he pauses, “I’m really confused.” He settles on, because it’s all he’s certain of. “Like, I think…” What does he think? He’s been thinking, that’s for sure, but has he even figured anything out? “I think - Keith makes me feel weird.”

“Weird?” Rachel asks, ever patient and serious when she needs to be. “Weird how?”

And so Lance tells her, curls his fingers into the fabric of his jacket, sandwiches his phone between his cheek and his shoulder, and he tells her. Keith makes his stomach twist in a way that isn’t so bad. Keith’s _alone_ outweighs Lance’s _everyone._ Keith makes his heart sing in harmony to the violins in _Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas._ Somehow, Keith is always somewhere on his mind.

“I just,” he finds himself running out of words. “I don’t know what any of this means.”

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

“I think you know exactly what this means.” Rachel says, and it startles Lance. He’s been talking for so long he almost forgot she was listening.

It’s probably better that way though, it’s probably why it was so easy to talk.

“Why the hell else would you have cancelled your flight here with the intent of driving through four states just so he wouldn’t be alone?” Lance knows why.

Lance doesn’t want to hear her say it.

“You’re in love, Leandro.”

And there it is. The one thing he’s wanted more than anything since he was little, and now that it’s finally found him, he’s spent the better part of the past four years hiding from it.

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

So much. He’s been hiding for nearly four years, he doesn’t understand how she’s managed to find him. He’s hiding from himself and he’s hiding from Keith and he’s hiding from everything else that might hurt him if they ever found him.

“I can’t be.” he says. “No,” he insists, “there’s no- there’s no way.” He shakes his head harshly, his hair flopping around wildly.

He _can’t be._ Which is something he doesn’t think Rachel quite understands the weight of. If he is, then he’s vulnerable, an open target for arrows and spears and scars. A clear shot for everything he’s spent so long hiding from.

“Lance,” Rachel says placatively, but Lance doesn’t let her finish.

“No,” he says desperately, swallowing the tightness in his throat. “ _No,_ Raquel, please,” he begs, as if she’s the reason he’s feeling this way. As if she can stop it with a flick of her wrist.

He swallows thickly again, forcing down the feeling in his throat and the feeling in his stomach. Like a hot chill up his spine that manifests in his lungs. Lance knows this feeling, and he doesn’t like how it ends.

“I can’t.” He finishes brokenly, his hands shaking. _Just breathe, Lance._

“Okay,” Rachel whispers. She sounds dejected, like she wants to say something more but is choosing not to. “Okay.”

They devolve into silence, but nothing is quiet to Lance anymore.

...

He’s been driving down the same road for the past eight hours.

Or maybe they’re different roads, he’s not quite sure. They all look identical to Lance, covered in sheets of ice and surrounded by fields of nothingness, he has to wonder if he’s even moving at all.

 _Maybe I’m stuck in a time-loop,_ Lance thinks to himself, _like in Groundhog Day._

“Or maybe,” he says aloud, shaking the thought from his mind, “it’s winter.”

There aren’t many people on the road today, most likely due to the weather. A car speeds passed him on his right and Lance wonders who they’re trying to get to. What flight they must have missed to be on this highway, cutting through ice patches and speeding through snow drifts.

He doesn’t mind being alone save from the few other people braving the storm, which is probably why he’s almost enjoying the trip. (He’d probably enjoy it more if it wasn’t trying to kill him with slippery lane changes and black ice every other time he blinks.) Lance has always been a thinker, always needed time to mull things over and find a place in himself where he could keep them.

Lance doesn’t want to think today. Doesn’t want enough time to himself to mull over Rachel’s words from this morning. He’s been running for nearly four years, he can run a little longer.

But it’s impossible to run away from himself, from his head that seems to be reeling from this morning and sometime before that, too. Right now, it seems to be reeling from something else entirely.

_“You’re in love, Leandro.”_

But how can he be? What is he even in love with?

The way his stomach squeezes whenever Keith says his name. The way his throat seems to be set aflame when he thinks about their dorm—their _home._ A little room on the edge of the world, and yet still so warm. The way Keith knows him sometimes better than he knows himself. The fact that they’ve seen each other fall apart and then build themselves up from nothing. The fact that Keith was there the first time he had to build himself up from nothing.

But can he call that love? Is that enough for the universe to grant him his own fallen star?

Has he done enough to deserve it?

Maybe the little boy that Lance used to be did something good. Something worth so much more than Lance had ever imagined it could.

The song rumbling through the radio ends, Lance doesn’t remember it beginning in the first place. George Bailey is on the radio again, Lance wonders if he has a daily show _._ He wouldn’t be surprised, given his boisterous and excitable personality.

He has a segment called _The Line is Alive,_ where people call into the studio to vote on what  Christmas song he should play next. Lance thinks it’s the most pointless, ridiculous radio show segment he’s ever heard of.

_“Aaaaand The Line is Alive. Hello, this is Blaytz Radio...”_

The number of times Lance has heard him say that exact into could rival the amount of times Lance has thought about Keith in the past two days.

 _“... you seem to be the tie breaker!”_ George Bailey says, _“which song has your vote?”_

 _“Definitely ‘Last Christmas,’”_ the woman says decisively, George Bailey laughs happily. _“That song is a classic!”_

 _“Absolutely, thank you so much for calling in, Plaxum, Happy Holidays to you.”_ George says, “ _now here’s Wham with ‘Last Christmas’... on Blaytz Radio.”_ Lance remembers listening to this song when he was a kid, his siblings and him performed it once for all their cousins.

 _“Last Christmas I gave you my heart,”_ the song starts. _“But the very next day… you gave it away.”_

And suddenly, Lance wants to throw up.

Sometime somewhere in his past, he must have done something good enough to warrant him a fallen star.

But he hasn’t done enough to warrant _being_ one.

Lance can give his heart away freely, but that’s no guarantee that he’ll get on in return. That he deserves one in return.

So Rachel was wrong. Lance isn’t in love, because how can he be? How can he let himself paint a target across his face for arrows and spears and scars? He can’t.

He switches the radio off, suddenly very aware of the noise of the wind rushing passed him outside his windshield. Suddenly very aware that nothing is silent anymore. But this time, the silence is his doing. His fault. At least he knows where it’s coming from.

His lit up phone screen slides across the passenger seat, bumping the centre console and it reminds Lance that he isn’t really as alone as he thinks.

“Hey, I thought it’d be you.” Lance says, smiling and swerving and inhaling sharply all at once.

“Obviously,” Keith says, “who else would call you at three in the afternoon on a Saturday?”

“Who the fuck would have the time?” Lance counters.

“Is now a bad time for you?” Keith asks sincerely.

“My family’s out,” he says shortly, and he’s not sure why. He spends all of his time running, all his time hiding from something that’s always looming over him. But when he should be picking up speed, should be sprinting as fast as he can, he stops. Just stops dead in his tracks, like his legs have given out, left him stranded to wait out the exertion on his own.

“But Dia and Sylvie are crashing from copious amounts of sugar consumption.” Lance continues, legs cramped under him, unmoving. “They’re out like lights. So, tió Lancey Lance—that’s me—being the best tió in the world, has offered to stay with them.”

He remembers when that situation was true, last summer, late July when Lance would take them to the beach and watch the water and the sun work together to pain them in shades of orange and pink, soaking them in salty breezes and uncontrollable laughter. It startles him to remember, to wonder how different they are now, how they’ve grown while he was away.

“Truly a martyr.” Keith says, and Lance has to take a second to remember what it’s in response to.

“I _really_ am.”

They lapse into silence as Lance curves around a bend in the highway.

“I figured out how to work Shiro’s fireplace this morning.”

And Lance has to laugh. Imagining Keith, curled up beside a fireplace in his red drawstring hoodie, a dog in his lap and the phone lazily thrown on the couch cushion behind his head. While Lance is currently surrounded by falling pellets of ice and snow piled higher than his head lining the highway. _Fire and ice,_ Lance thinks, _yin and yang._

“You actually went near that thing?” Shiro and Adam’s fireplace hasn’t been used since the old owners lived there.

“It really wasn’t that hard, Shiro’s just a baby.”

“Or maybe he just doesn’t want to burn his house down.”

Keith hums indignantly. “I turned the gas down.”

“I don’t think you can just _turn gas down.”_

“Have you ever turned Shiro’s fireplace on, Lance?”

“And besides,” Lance says, ignoring Keith’s comment. “Isn’t their pilot light turned off?”

“... well it isn’t anymore.”

“Oh my gosh, Keith.” Lance scolds but he’s laughing and smiling and there’s a swelling in his chest that’s somehow both familiar and yet foreign at the same time.

Lance had tried to make that fireplace work several times over the years. He never could figure it out, always deciding against proceeding when he saw the old burnt up chambers. Keith has never tried, as far as Lance remembers. He doesn’t understand how Keith saw the old chimney and decided it was in good working condition.

“Listen,” Keith sounds closer to the phone than before. “I’m not dead, so I must not have fucked up _that_ badly.”

“That’s subjective.”

“Not when I’m the only subject.”

“What are you doing now?”

Lance hopes it’s more exciting than driving down the same road for eight hours. And less dangerous than _turning down gas_ or whatever the fuck that means.

“I just finished watching a Christmas movie.” Which peaks Lance’s interests.  

“What movie?” He hopes he doesn’t sound too eager, like he could watch Christmas films right now, too, if he wanted.

“ _Love Actually._ ”

Lance makes a noise that sounds like it’s between a laugh and a sob.

“That bad, huh?”

“What?” Lance nearly yells, “no, I fucking love that movie.”

“Yeah?” _yeah, yeah, yeah._

“It’s a Lance Suárez classic.”

“That makes it sound like it’s your movie.”

“What did you think of it?”

“It was alright, a bit eager at some parts.” His voice drops to almost a drone. “And some of the characters I really couldn’t care less about.”

“That’s fair, I think I might actually agree with you.”

“Oh shit, mark this down as a national holiday,” Keith sounds completely serious, “December twenty-second, _Lance Agrees With Keith's Opinion of A Movie Day_.”

“Christmas _who?”_

They laugh together and Lance thinks it sounds like sweet harmony.

“I liked the ending.” Keith says genuinely.

“I _love_ the ending.”

“I thought you might.”

“Are you kidding, that scene at the end where Joanna sings Mariah Carey to Sam is what made thirteen year old me want to fall in love.” Nevermind the fact that Lance has been in love with the idea of love since long before _Love Actually._ It still _did._

“You watched _Love Actually_ at thirteen?”

“Well, no, not all of it. Marco wouldn’t let me watch all of it until I was sixteen.”

“For good reason.”

“Probably.”

Keith laughs, that rumbly chest laugh that makes Lance’s stomach do somersaults around itself, and he can’t help but smile knowing he was the one that pulled it out of him.

“What’re you thinking about?” Keith asks.

“How do you know I’m thinking?”

“You’re always thinking, Lance.”

“I’m thinking about Denny’s pancakes,”

Keith chuckles, sounds like he’s moving around on the other end of the phone. “Why?”

“Because I’m hungry. And I want pancakes.”

“So you think about things you want?”

“Perhaps.”

“What else are you thinking about?”

 _Holding your hand,_ Lance wants to say, because it’s true, because now that he really thinks about it, somehow that’s always somewhere on his mind. But he stops himself, because he would never let himself say something like that.

He would never paint a target on himself by letting something like that slip up.

“I’m thinkin’ about the fact that you told me you turned down gas, which I’m pretty sure you can’t do.” Lance says instead, refusing to allow the conversation shift into one that felt like the one they had the other night. _We were tired,_ Lance tells himself, _we were just tired._

“ _Listen,”_ Keith exasperates, “When you come back, you’re gonna come sit in front of this fireplace and say _ah geez, sorry for ever underestimating your fireplace-working skills, Keith_.” He says, lowering his voice into one that sounds nothing like Lance’s.

Lance scrunches up his nose, even though Keith can’t see him do it. “I definitely don’t sound like that.” Lance feels himself smile.

And when Keith laughs, it sounds like thunder.

...

The sun sets at 17:14 that evening.

So it’s no wonder to Lance that by 21:40. it’s pitch black outside.

The stars peek through cracks of clouds, and when they reflect in Lance’s windshield, it looks like they’re simultaneously behind and in front of him.

He thinks that’s important, that it must mean something, but he’s not sure what.

He wonders what Marco would think of it. His brother, who introduced him to the stars. His brother, whose been lost in them since he was a child. His brother, who brought him along with him when he turned seven.

On Lance and Rachel’s seventh birthday, after the rest of his siblings had wound down for the night, he had convinced Marco to take him out to the ocean to look at the stars. He knew he would say yes, because it was his birthday, but also because he knew he wanted to look, too.

The sun went to sleep at 20:04 that night, and the water reflected the stars in flecks of white and gold. Lance tried to map out every one, the biggest game of connect-the-dots he’d ever seen.

Lance wanted to swim in it. Feel the freckles on his back mix with the blueprints of the cosmos.

 _“The water and the sky have been best friends since the beginning of time,”_ Marco had said as he dipped his hands under the water, stars rippling and settling into place atop his palms.

Lance wanted to get lost in them. Or maybe he already had.

 _“Leandro,”_ Marco had paused, his eyes lost somewhere in the face in the moon. _“I think the stars tell us something.”_

Lance was intrigued. _“Like what?”_

_“Do you know what a constellation is?”_

Lance nodded.

He took a deep breath. _“Stars burn, but they also fall. They change course all the time, and they choose who gets to follow them on that course._ _”_

_“I don’t get it.”_ Lance had said, because he didn’t; because seven year old Lance had no idea that he’d grow up to want to explore the stars.

Marco had smiled and crouched down to look Lance in the eye. _“They look like they’re alone, when you just focus on one of them, and they’re very beautiful, and they’re very special; all on their own. But they make something when they’re together. And I think that’s supposed to mean something. I think_ they’re _supposed to mean something.”_

Lance hadn’t been sure what Marco meant by that, still thinks about it fifteen years later. But every time he does, his brain feels fuzzy, like he’s missing something. Something that’s keeping him from understanding.

He flips on the radio.

 _Driving Home For Christmas_ by Chris Rea is playing, and Lance thinks it’s hilariously unfitting.

 _I’m driving home for Christmas,_ Chris sings.

While Lance is driving away.

Away from the fire lit in his throat. Away from the flickering and fluttering in his chest, buried beneath his ribcage.

He’s nowhere near his home, on some snowy highway in one state or another, Lance has lost track, with his rental car’s heated seat as the only thing to keep him warm.

He really does hope his family is having fun without him. Making cookies and wrapping presents (terribly) together. He hopes Sylvio took his place in the Christmas Carol ensemble the Suárez siblings put on every year. He hopes Rachel is doing okay without him, though he knows she is.

He hopes the waves adore the sand just as much as they did when he last saw them.

The stars glare brightly in Lances rear-view mirror, and he squeezes the tension in his jaw out through the steering wheel.

He focuses back at the road in front of him. No more snow, not since yesterday and, according to the weather reports, it’s not coming back until the twenty-fifth. Christmas day. _Lance’s first White Christmas_.

Lance’s first White Christmas, and he gets to spend it with Keith.

And, suddenly, the tension in his jaw and in the rest of him dissipates.

Keith’s smile, Keith’s rumbly chest laugh, Keith’s sketchy fireplace. All there to light a fire in his throat. To flicker and flutter in his chest, buried beneath his ribcage. There to keep him warm.

Rachel had told him he was in love.

Lance had told her that he couldn’t be.

Lance thinks that maybe he lied.

He drives around a curve in the highway, and the stars reflection glints in his windshield again. Like he’s driving away from and towards them at the same time.

 _“I think the stars tell us something.”_ Marco had said to him once. _“I think they’re_ _supposed to mean something.”_

He thinks he might understand what he meant.

 _I’m driving home for Christmas,_ the song finishes with, and Lance wonders if he can be simultaneously driving away from, and towards home at the same time.

The stars shine in Lance’s windshield, and he thinks they tell him the answer.

* * *

 

**_Sunday, December 23rd, 00:07, (645km)_ **

He doesn’t drive very far after the sun sets completely, the dark making the ice more aggressive, more frequent, more invisible.

He finds another motel, much like the one from the first night. A bit smaller, a bit warmer. Red and blue and yellow and green Christmas lights strung up across the rooftop. He changes his clothes tonight, Luis’s borrowed hoodie swapped out for one that’s actually Lance’s. A navy blue one that says _Divisional Finalist_ across the chest in yellow lettering. Sylvio and Nadia trace over the logo before competitions.

 _“A token of good luck,”_ Sylvio had called it. Lance hasn’t lost a competition since.

The bed is surprisingly soft and comfortable, like fluffy snow under his fingertips. But before he climbs under the thick white blanket and buries himself into the mattress, he pulls his phone from his pocket.

It vibrates against his ear as he dial tone buzzes.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Lura.” he says, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Lance,” Allura’s voice is clear through the receiver, like dripping honey or budding roses. “When was the last time any of us went to sleep at this hour?”

Never, as far as Lance can remember.

“Coran’s asleep,” she says, “he just passes out sometimes. Works himself too hard, I think.”

“Sounds like someone I know.”

Allura had been adopted when she was eight, and every year during winter or spring break, she flies back home. She always returns with treats lovingly made for the three others by Coran, and while Lance has only met Coran a handful of times, he already loves him.

He’s an engineer, one Hunk admires openly, always wide-eyed, asking him about his work when he comes down to visit Allura. Lance thinks it’s amazing, really, to see Hunk so excited by someone in his field. It reminds him of himself when he first met Shiro.

“How’s your family?” Allura asks, she had always heard him speak fondly of them, a photo of his extended family hangs proudly above his desk.

“Uh,” he says, unsure of how to tell her where he is. “Actually, that’s what I’m calling about.”

“Is everything alright?” she sounds alarmed.

“Oh yeah!” Lance assures, “they’re all okay, it’s more um- me? I guess.”

“You? Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” He says too quickly. “Well, kinda. I’m uh, not actually home... With my family.” So maybe he isn’t the most articulate person.

“Where…” she pauses, “are you, then?”

“Somewhere in Kentucky.” He says it like a question.

“Okay,” she says calmly, dragging out the _‘a’_ sound. “Why?”

So Lance tells her, spends twenty minutes summing up the cancelled plane ticket, Keith’s empty house, his family’s words. By the end of it, he wonders if she’s fallen asleep.

“-so I rented a car.” Lance finishes, “and now I’m driving back up.”

“Holy shit,” she says.

“Yeah, Hunk said the same thing.”

“And you’re sure about this?” She asks seriously.

“Absolutely.” Lance wouldn’t have already driven a thousand kilometers if he wasn’t.

He wonders what Allura would do if she were in his position. She’d weigh her options meticulously, calculating the best plan of action, while also considering what she _wanted_ to do. She was remarkably good at that, something Lance admired greatly.

_But would she decide to drive back?_

He thinks she might, if Romelle were the one stuck without anyone to keep her company for the next two weeks. If she felt for Keith what Lance did, he thinks she would.

“Okay.” Allura finally says, “I believe you.” Lance smiles.

“You believe me or you believe _in_ me?” He asks jokingly. He knows she’d have his back in whatever decision he makes, she’s proven that over the four years they’ve known each other.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” she says, chuckling softly, Lance laughs with her. Then their laughter dies down and Allura sighs against his ear. “Keith is really lucky to have you, you know?”

Lance inhales sharply. “Is he?” he asks, and he means it. _Is he?_ Lance is lucky to have Keith, he knows that. Knows that he wouldn’t have survived living away from his family for so long without him. He’s lucky that Keith knows him so well, that sometimes he doesn’t have to say anything to be heard.

But is Keith lucky to have him? Is he lucky that Lance is hiding from himself, that Lance has been running away from the both of them since longer than he can remember? Is he lucky that Lance decided to name him as home, when all Keith has ever wanted was a home of his own? Would Lance feel lucky to have someone like him in his life? He’s not sure he would.

 _“You’re in love, Leandro.”_ Rachel had told him, and he denied it. Ran away from it. He can’t decide now if he’s trying to run away from or towards it.

“Do you not think so, Lance?” Allura asks, and Lance has to remember what she’s asking about. _Do you not think you’re in love, Lance?_

_Do you not think Keith is lucky to have you?_

“I- no.” He says honestly. “Not at all.”

“Why?” Allura inquires, not judgingly, but kindly, analytically. Like he’s a puzzle she’s trying to piece together.

“Because,” Lance starts, “because I- he makes me… feel _strange_ . _”_ He doesn’t know why he says it, considering the last time he told someone like this, Rachel had jumped to the conclusion that Lance was in _love._ But he says it anyways, because maybe now he’s ready to hear it again.

“Strange how?” Allura presses.

“He just,” Lance sighs. “It feels like I’m underwater whenever I’m around him. And I’ve been trying to stop my fucking stomach from doing _that_ whenever he and I talk, but it won’t listen. And now I can’t even _talk_ to him without overthinking everything I’m going to say because I’m afraid of fucking something up.”

Allura listens quietly the whole time Lance is speaking, he can hear her breath rumble through the speaker occasionally, but she lets him speak, because she knows he needs it.

“I can’t stop _thinking_ about him,” Lance continues, “it’s like all I can think about is him and I don’t really know how long it’s been like this, but I’m certain it’s not a recent development. And my sister isn’t any help—she’s fucking crazy—she thinks I’m in _love,_ which is the most ridiculous-”

“Lance,” Allura says gently, cutting Lance’s rambling off.

He breathes heavily against his phone, waiting for her to continue.

“Have you ever stopped to think that maybe Keith feels the same way?”

Which, well, _no._ He’s barely figured out how he feels, let alone what Keith feels. All he knows is that he’s really lucky to have Keith, but he doesn’t think he means half as much to the boy who makes Lance's stomach grind itself into pieces

“I- uh,” how is he supposed to respond, anyways? “Not really.”

He had stopped his thoughts once they told him what Rachel had told him. Didn’t allow himself to make anything any worse than it already was. And maybe that is what's holding him back. Maybe, if he had a mirror that doubled as a time machine, he could go back to the very first time he let himself think about Keith and stop it in its track. Before it even began.

He pretends he can't pinpoint that moment to the day in the library, with Keith by his knee, smiling from breathless giggles as they tried to be quiet. He pretends he wouldn't know what moment to go back to, because he doesn't want to miss any of the rest.

“Why not?” Allura asks, like she’s finally figured him out, like there’s one piece of the puzzle left to put together and she’s waiting to slot it in.

“I-” he stumbles over his tongue, not knowing how to say all the things he’s been wanting to say for the past four years. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.” Allura says, “Lance, why else do you think you would have brought this up?”

Lance knows why.

Lance needs her to say it.

“I think, when you really think about it,” she says calmly, pressing the last piece of the puzzle into place, “you know that your sister is right.”

And there it is again, the one thing he’s wanted since he was a child, the one thing he has spent the better part of the last four years hiding from. The thing he heard the name of yesterday and bolted in the other direction.

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

From hurt, and pain, and confusion, and possible rejection and isn’t he allowed to hide from that? Isn’t he allowed to be scared sometimes?

Isn’t he allowed to stare down down down at the ground that will eventually break his fall, and want to turn around?

He’s built himself a stone wall, but he never considered he’d be the one to climb it.

Lance has had enough time to accumulate a lot of reasons why _not._ Why he shouldn’t speak louder than a whisper, why he shouldn’t stop cementing himself in stone. Boxes upon dusty boxes stuffed with reasons of why _not._

But he’s tired of hiding. Doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life teetering on the edge himself.

Why _not_.

Because he’s afraid of falling.

But Lance has been falling this whole time, can admit that now. Drifting like snow, floating like falling stars. Lance knows that he’s _falling,_ because he’s felt it before. Felt himself fall like he’s slipping on ice skates and he’s waiting to feel the wind be knocked out of him but he never does. And that’s where he is now. In the air, flailing and falling and the most he can hope for is that he doesn’t break when he hits the ice.

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

He's not.

Maybe he wasn’t ready to hear it from Rachel, yesterday morning which feels like an eternity ago. And maybe he’s not ready now, after consulting with the stars, and naming himself a home away from home. But maybe he’ll never be ready. To hear it, or to think about it, or to _say_ it.

Maybe it doesn't matter whether he's ready or not; because life barrels after him at full force, and if he stops for even a second to catch his breath, he's afraid it might zip right passed him.

So maybe he’s not ready to think about or say it, and maybe he never will be. But he's heard Rachel say it, and he's hears Allura say it now, too, and maybe that's enough.

Enough for now.

...

George Bailey is not on the radio today. Lance didn’t think he’d miss hearing the line come alive.

He doesn’t have much time to miss it anyways, because on December twenty third, at 5:30 in the evening, Lance drives straight into a blizzard.

At first, he isn’t even aware that what he’s driving through _is_ a blizzard. He assumes the snow came back to fuck him over and, in a way, it did. But not in the way he had thought. Blizzards don’t look particularly different from normal snowfall in the beginning. But Lance has been crawling through it for almost an hour now. He starting to notice the difference.

“Shit,” he breathes, his tires sliding on a patch of black ice. The highway is lined with snow and ice and cars that have been hit or hit something, but Lance tries not to focus on it. Wills himself not to focus on it.

His car skids down the road and Lance clenches his teeth together. This is very bad.

When he was two, his family had gotten in a car accident. He doesn’t remember it, and neither does Rachel, but Veronica had nightmares of it for two weeks after. They were rear-ended on a highway, because the person in the car behind them didn’t know the dangers of tailgating. Their mamá had gotten whiplash, and she remembers the weeks after as all her children waiting on her hand and foot.

 _“The sweetest kids in the world,”_ she had called them.

What she hadn’t told Lance was that there was a possibility that she could have gotten a bit more than whiplash.

He learns fatality statistics of car accidents when he’s older, that there was a possibility that any one of them could have died in the crash that he doesn’t even remember. It scared him then.

It scares him now.

Lance doesn’t consider himself a fatalist, in fact, he’s always thought of himself as a realist. All facts and function and explanation. Where everything has its place and he likes to keep it that way. So when the thought passes through his mind that he might actually _die_ here, on this barren highway made of ice, it becomes eerily aware to him of just how bad his situation is.

Ice shoots through his veins, pooling in his stomach and then catching on fire. He swallows the tightness in his throat and focuses all of his attention on the road.

_Just breathe, Lance._

There are a couple of other cars on the road. (Actually _on_ the road, not stopped around the sides.) Lance hopes that wherever they’re going, they make it there in time. It must be important. Anything worth driving through a blizzard must be important.

Keith must be important.

_Just breathe, Lance._

Keith _is_ important, Lance wouldn’t be doing this if he wasn’t. He knows that, and he knows _why_ now _._ Keith had always been like an anchor for Lance.

Lance’s niece was born three weeks early. The end of his first year at University, right in the middle of midterms, Lance had come home to study, and instead was interrupted by a phone call from his brother.

“Lisa has to get emergency surgery,” Veronica had told him, but Lance could barely hear, anyways.

_Just breathe, Lance._

He couldn’t go home, he had two exams the next day and one the day after. He was stuck almost 2,000 kilometers away from his sister in law who had been rushed into emergency surgery to have a miracle baby. There was nothing he could do.

“It’s okay,” Vero insisted, “they’re teaching her positions to sit in to make herself relax and be more comfortable. And breathing exercises, just like they ones you know.”

_Just breathe, Lance._

“She’ll be okay, Lance, we just thought you should know what’s going on.”

Lance hung up the phone, or maybe he dropped it, he wasn’t sure.  

It’s the first time Keith saw him have a panic attack.

Keith found him on the couch. Or sitting next to the couch, he didn’t make it as far as sitting down. He remembers his hands shaking and rubbing against his jeans. His chest had closed off, felt like there was a pile of bricks or rocks or _something_ pressing down on his ribcage, and all he could think about was getting them off, off, _off._  

Tears were pooling in his ears that made it sound like he was underwater. Like he’d been knocked off his board and into the ocean, but there was no coming up for air.  

Lance could feel Keith sit on the floor near him, not touching, which Lance was infinitely grateful for, just sitting. Just _being there._

 _“Just breathe, Lance.”_ Keith had said somewhere next to him. He repeated it like a mantra ( _just breathe, breathe, breathe, Lance.)_ until Lance’s eyes refocused on the coffee table in front of him. Until Lance could hoist himself up on his board and breathe, breathe, breathe.

Some tire of some car that Lance can’t see through the thickness of the falling snow screeches behind him, and he takes a shuddering breath.

_Just breathe, Lance._

_Just breathe, breathe, breathe..._

…

“Lance?”

Lance tries to focus on just the sound of another person’s voice. (Stupid George Bailey and his stupid not-on-Sunday’s show.)

“Hey, Lance, are you okay?”

Lance exhales for a long time. “Keith,” he says, his voice weak, shaking.

“I’m here,” Keith says gently, “just breathe, Lance.”

_Just breathe, breathe, breathe, Lance._

Lance’s phone is in his lap, Keith’s voice fizzing, echoing from the speaker at the bottom. It sounds like he’s underwater.

“What’s going on? Where’s your family?” Keith’s voice sounds far away, and Lance briefly remembers that he _is_ far away. 645 kilometers away.

Tears drip from Lance’s eyes. He blinks them into streams that collect at his chin.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says, because he can’t think of a way to say _I’m driving through a blizzard because I cancelled my flight to Cuba to come see you. Also I think I might actually die._

“Sorry?” Keith sounds very confused, “what are you sorry for?”

“I should’ve- I should’ve told you sooner.” Lance says, shaking his head.

“Lance?” Keith says, like he doesn’t know what else to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Sorry.”

“Lance.”

Lance attempts a weak smile. “Okay.”

“Tell me,” Keith whispers.

“I-” Lance takes a deep breath. “I should’ve told you sooner,” he says, “I thought I was… Jesus, I don’t know, protecting you? Or maybe me, you and I both know how selfish I can be.”

“Lance.”

“But, for whatever fucking reason, I didn’t tell you, and I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry, Keith.”

“Lance.”

“I don’t- I can’t- I know _why_ but it’s a stupid _fucking_ reason, and I’m so fucking mad that I let it get in the way.”

“Please stop crying.”

Lance is hyperventilating, or at least it feels like it. He tries to breathe, steady his hands and focus on the road, but his breathing is broken up into ten smaller, hiccuping breaths.  

“I’m so sorry.”

“For what, Lance?” Keith says gently. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

_If only that were true._

“I can’t believe I waited for this to happen before telling you.” Lance thinks out loud.

“What’s _this?”_ Keith asks, “what’s happening?”

“I wanted to tell you, face-to-face.” Or maybe he wanted to wait it out so he could read the situation in person.

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

“But I, uh, I’m not sure I’ll…” _get the chance._

“You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“I think-”

A car screams passed him on his left, and Lance jerks his steering wheel so far in the other direction it’s a wonder he doesn’t drive into one of the many snow drifts on the side of the highway. His tires screech against the road aggressively, screaming at Lance to stop.

“What the Hell was that? Lance a-” the line cuts out, then back in, “-ou okay?”

_No, no, no, no I’m not okay because I can barely see a foot in front of me and yet all I can think about is holding your hand._

“Yeah,” he hears himself say, “I’m fine. Just,” he pauses to catch his breath. His tears have stopped falling, and his breathing is semi-regular, but his heartbeat is still fast. Lance isn’t sure if that’s a result of the storm or the boy on the phone. “Just listen, please.”

“I’m listening, Lance. But you’re really scaring me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, just please t-”

And the line goes dead.

…

Static erupts from the cell phones when they lose reception.

It sounds like he's under water.

...

Lance doesn’t really remember what happened after the line cut out.

He remembers saying Keith’s name, like if Keith heard him, his voice might fizzle back through the receiver. Instead, a drone erupted from the speaker on his phone, and Lance thinks it might have been the loudest thing he’s ever heard.

Lance remembers Keith saying something. Or attempting to before the snow crashed into his reception like a car sliding down the highway.

 _“It’s okay, just please t-” ell me what’s going on._ Lance wishes he could. Wishes he could climb up onto the rooftop and scream it at the top of his lungs, willing it to travel the distance he can not. Anything to make sure he never had to hear Keith sound so scared again.

It tugs on his fingers and weighs on his back that _he_ is the reason for Keith sounding so scared. For Keith being so scared.

_Just breathe, Lance._

“Good evening, ma’am,” the man behind the front desk of whatever motel Lance has found himself in says. The woman three people in front of Lance steps up to the desk.

Lance rubs his hands anxiously against his pant legs. He should be driving or moving or running or _something._ Anything beside standing in line at another Christmas coloured motel.

“The snow’s gotten pretty bad, huh?” The woman in front of Lance turns around to say. She’s small with graying hair and warm brown eyes that remind him of his abuela’s. “Probably better that you camp out here instead of braving the storm.”

Lance smiles weakly, because at 7:06pm, ninety-six minutes after Lance drove into the storm, and seventy-four minutes after Lance lost reception to his phone, an announcement was made that the roads were to be closed until the snow let up.

“Actually the roads were closed indefinitely,” Lance says bashfully, “otherwise I’d still be out there.”

Lance isn’t sure if he’s happy that he was forced out of the snow before it buried him, or angry that now all he has to do is wait.  

He needs to talk to Keith. That’s all that’s running through his head. He anxiously taps against his phone in his pocket, willing it to ding or light up with new-found reception. The last thing he wants is for Keith to worry about him when he _can’t even contact him._

He thinks he’s losing his mind. Trapped here, completely helpless. At the mercy of the sky.

 _“The water and the sky have been best friends since the beginning of time,”_ his brother had told him once. Maybe the water was angry with him; because he chose Keith over Varadero.

Because he chose sky over water.

_Like falling stars._

The woman in front of him in line must see the ghostly look in his eyes, or the lack of sleep in his eyes, or perhaps the leftover tears in his eyes, because she stares at him pensively for a moment before saying, “where are you going, honey?”

Lance doesn’t even hesitate. “Home,” he says.

She smiles sadly, and Lance can see the ghostly look in his eyes reflected in her own. “Aren’t we all.”

...

Christmas Eve has always been one of Lance’s favourite days.

When he was a kid, he would spend the day with his siblings; climbing trees or chasing cars or singing at the top of their lungs. He’d get Luis to carry him on his shoulders as they all ran down to the beach. Too cold to swim but never too cold to run across the sand.

At night, Lance would really come alive. His _entire_ family would always come over, tía’s holding steaming dishes covered in tin-foil and tío’s arms overflowing with piles upon piles of presents. Lance’s living room would be filled with people before everyone even arrived.

When he moved out, Keith and him made their own traditions. Christmas Eve for the both of them was spent with their families, but they coined their own Christmas Eve, called They Day We L _eve._ They thought it was clever when they were eighteen and nineteen.

They still think it’s clever.

Every year, The Day We L _eve_ is spent differently. The first year, they had made cookies together at Shiro and Adam’s house. Though it was more of _Lance makes cookies while Keith flings flour around the kitchen and eats the raw egg dough._ They didn’t make cookies the next year.

Instead, Keith took Lance ice skating for the first time, and by the end of the day, Keith had somehow stolen Lance’s favourite blue scarf.

He still has the scarf. Lance pretends not to notice every time he sees him wearing it.

Two years ago, they had spent it with Hunk and Allura. The four of them attempted to do one of those Christmas mazes together. Needless to say, they all got lost. When they (Allura) finally found the exit, Lance’s fingers were blue with cold, and Keith’s nose was about as red as his scarf.

 _“Should’ve dressed warmer,”_ Hunk had sang at the three others, reiterating his advice from earlier that day.

The next time they all went out together, Lance made sure to wear two jackets.

This year, The Day We L _eve_ was spent at home. Keith and Lance spent it curled up on Keith’s bed. They hadn’t even meant to do nothing, planned on heading out for at least a walk around east-campus, but when Lance had finally checked the the time, 16:45 blinked back at him, and the two decided against moving from the bed covers they'd cocooned themselves in.

Lance fell asleep on Keith’s bed.

This year, The Day We L _eve_ was spent at home.

This year, he thought Christmas Eve would be, too.

* * *

 

**_Monday, December 24th, 04:01 (430km)_ **

Lance decides against climbing the roof. His phone reception is still dead, and so is the Wifi in the motel. Something about a frozen, buried cell tower. The whole town is essentially without internet, for the time being.

He thinks he's losing his mind.

The hour hand on the analogue clock across from his bed rotates in time to the sun orbiting around the Earth, and Lance thinks that that must mean something.

Less than twenty hours to Christmas Day, and Lance is camped out in the middle of nowhere.

Last year, on Christmas Eve, Lance had spent it in his childhood house, in his childhood room, with his sister. This year, for all he knows, he could be spending it locked up in a motel room. He feels completely helpless.

 _“Estúpido,”_ Rachel would call him. _“None of this is your fault.”_

Keith had met Lance’s twin sister once. Three years into living together, Rachel finally convinced Lance to let her and visit for reading break.

“She won’t have anywhere to stay.” Lance had explained to Keith when the latter had asked why he was so adamant about his sister not coming up. “There’s no way were gonna be able to afford a hotel. I mean, were both drowning in tuition as it is.”

Lance was sitting at his desk, laptop open in front of him as he stared intently at the email from his sister. Keith was on Lance’s bed, legs crossed under him as he watched Lance’s fingers patter rhythmically against the table.

“She can stay with us.” Keith said absently.

“And sleep on the floor?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not.” Keith had said, picking at Lance’s (Keith’s) blanket. “I mean, Hunk and Lura always sleep over anyways.”

“Yeah but they never stay for a week straight.” Lance wasn’t about to insist that his sister sleep on the floor of his dorm for an entire week.

“Then I’ll sleep on the floor, and she can take the bed.” Keith said definitively, looking Lance right in the eye. Unwavering. Like he really meant it.

“What? No, Keith I’m not gonna force you to sleep on the floor of your own room.” As much as Lance appreciated the offer, as sweet and genuine as it was, Lance wasn’t about to make _anyone_ sleep on the floor for a week straight.

Keith sighed, unfolding his legs from under him to stand. The next time he spoke, his voice was clearer, closer than before. “They we can take turns. Swap out; all three of us. We’ll work something out.” Lance looked to his side to find Keith leant up against his desk, eyes dark and earnest. They pour fire into Lance’s stomach.

_We’ll work something out._

Rachel visited two weeks later.

Lance apologized profusely for the sleeping arrangement, which had them all rotating between beds and the floor every night. Rachel had simply shushed him with a wave of her hand.

“Estúpido,” she had said, “Leandro, none of this is your fault. I’m so happy to see you both.”

He wonders what she’s doing without him this year, now that she has their old room to herself for the first time in her life. He wonders what his family is doing.

His family is making cookies with Nadia and Sylvio. His family is wrapping piles of presents in flashy wrapping paper. His family is clustered together, huddled around Lance’s childhood home, tío’s and tía’s and a million cousins scattered around the living room, performing their annual Christmas song concert.

The minute hand on the analogue rotates some more. _04:03._

His family is asleep.

He hopes it’s warm in Varadero for his family.

He hopes it’s warm in Michigan for Keith.

He hopes Keith isn’t too worried, though he suspects he is. Lance doesn’t quite remember everything he had said to him, slipping across the roads and fearing for his life, but he thinks it was enough to scare him.

It was enough to scare Lance, at least.

 _Gosh,_ Lance can’t believe he almost said it. And over the _phone_ no less.

It’s not that he needs more time to think about it or bring himself to say it. Maybe almost dying has made him realize that it doesn’t matter if Keith doesn’t feel the same way. Maybe it’d be enough for him just to say it. Just to cut it out and let it learn to breathe on its own.

He’s just really, _really_ relieved that he didn’t manage to let the words slip while his tongue was heavy with fear and panic.

He’s ready now. (Now that the rush to adrenaline to his head has dissipated, now that he knows for certain he _won’t_ let the words slip unless Keith was standing right in front of him, now now _now_.) And if his phone wasn’t disconnected from the world, he thinks he would call Rachel back. He thinks he's ready to hear it.

Maybe he's even ready to tell him, to have Keith know. To cut himself open and let Keith look— _really look_ —inside.

He hopes that, once this is all over, he can tell Keith face-to-face. The way he wants to, has always wanted to but has been too scared to.

His phone is lying next to him in bed, flashing the _No Service_ warning across the display, and Lance is reminded that he can’t be ready, even if he wants to be.

_No Service._

And maybe it’s the fact that Lance has been driving almost non-stop for the past three days; or maybe it’s the four-in-the-morning mentality that he gets during the ungodly hours of the day; or maybe his brain has just given up for the day; ran itself dry on the highway, sobbing and screaming until it emptied itself of anything of use.

_No Service._

Which is maybe why he tries, anyways.

**_and they were [Roommate]s_ **

**_(!)_ ** _[04:07]_ hey mullet

 **_(!)_ ** _[04:11]_ i wanna say that im sorry. and i know you keep telling me to stop apologising but i really mean it. this time especially. im sorry that i scared you today. honestly i was pretty terrified too, but you managed to calm me down, the way you always do, and i want you to know that. im not dead, tho i wouldn’t be surprised if you thought i was given how well our last conversation ended

 **_(!)_ ** _[04:12]_ im ‘okay’ i guess you could say but im not okay bc i feel like im burning up every second that i dont get to hold your hand

 **_(!)_ ** _[04:12]_ i hope your hands are still warm, even if im not there to keep them that way.

 **_(!)_ ** _[04:14]_ i still have something i really need to tell you, and i cant wait until i get the chance.  

 **_(!)_ ** _[04:14]_ happy christmas eve

 **_(!)_ ** _[04:15]_ <3

None of it sends, and Lance knows that none of it will. He leaves the Wifi search on, just in case.

He thinks he’s losing his mind.

…

Lance watches the sunrise on Christmas Eve.

It refracts off the snow piled high on the buildings around Lance’s motel suite, reminds Lance of the early morning’s his siblings would spend on the beach, catching the tail-end of sunrise as it bounced off of shimmering waves and caught on the round cheeks of the smiling Suárez children.

Lance doesn’t think he’s ever seen a prettier sunrise.

But maybe that’s because he’s _seeing_ the sun rise. No clouds. No more snowfall, but the roads are still closed without any indication of when they’ll be reopened. _If_ they’ll be reopened. Lance considers going out there and shoveling himself.

He thinks he’s losing his mind.

...

 _“This just in, highways and major roads have been reopened-”_ Lance springs himself off his bed, slamming his hand on the stereo-style radio on the bedside table in the motel. He had been listening to radio all day, hoping to hear good news about the roads being reopened. George Bailey had come on at eleven in the morning, brought the line to life four times before finally saying something Lance was interested in hearing.

At 13:04, the roads on the East Coast are reopened.

At 13:15, Lance is sat in his rental car, pulling away from the motel he had branded solitude for the past eighteen hours.  

There’s 430 kilometers between him and Keith, and Lance intends to make it zero by the end of the day. It’s Christmas Eve, two days after he had hoped to be home, but one day before he absolutely has to be home. He thinks that counts for something.

This drive, for the most part, is fine. There are hardly any other cars on the roads—likely due to everyone else being too frightened of the road conditions—so all Lance really has to keep him company is George Bailey’s radio show.

 _“We wanna know, what is the_ best _Christmas gift you’ve ever given to someone? Call or text us now hands free.”_

The _best_ Christmas gift Lance has ever given to someone was to a little girl when he was nine years old. He didn’t wrap it in a bow or fancy parchment, not even a messily tied ribbon strewn across the top. No, the edges were rough, and the sides were uneven, and something just didn’t seem to fit exactly right; but he handed it off with pride. Knew that regardless of the fact that this present wasn’t made for the girl, he did everything he could to make it feel like it was.

The _best_ Christmas gift Lance has ever given was a home.

_“I think the stars tell us something. I think they’re supposed to mean something.”_

The best gift someone else has given him was the beginning to the meaning behind the gift he had given so many years ago.

 _“And now,”_ George Bailey says, _“here’s Amy Grant with ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’.”_

 _Gosh,_ Lance thinks, _I hope so._

…

By the time the sun is setting, it becomes too apparent for Lance to ignore his stomach screaming for sustenance. Lance isn’t sure what town he’s managed to find himself in, but he is sure by the blinking light-up sign that there’s a coffee shop not far from the highway.

It’s a small establishment, just enough space for a counter, a kitchen and three or four tables pressed up against the window. There are warm white Christmas lights lining the roof on the inside and out and Lance thinks it looks like falling stars.

Signs line the frosty bay windows— _help wanted, free Wifi, no public washroom_ —but Lance is most interested in the man standing next to the signs, ringing a bell with a boot at his feet.

Lance gives what he can.

“Thank you so much,” the man says, and seems to really mean it. “All this goes to giving kids a Holiday season when they otherwise wouldn’t get one.” He smiles brightly at Lance, which Lance tries to mirror back.

_“All this goes to giving kids a Holiday season when they otherwise wouldn't get one.”_

Kids who might grow up to think that they do deserve company during the holidays. Kids who might grow up to teach their friend to ice skate, tumble around on the ice until they’re both on the ground, toppled over with laughter. Kids who could grow up to donate to kids just like them.

_Kids like Keith._

Lance buys a coffee, because he’s suddenly not very hungry anymore.

In less than 300 kilometers, he’ll be standing on Shiro and Adam’s front porch.

In less than 300 kilometers, he’ll finally get to see Keith, tell him he's alright, tell him something else, too.

_He’ll be home._

In less than 300 kilometres.

…

Shiro and Adam live in a small two bedroom house in a semi-suburban neighbourhood at the top of a hill. They have a pirate ship hand painted onto their mailbox, a relic from the previous owners. The ship had been a selling point for Adam. He said that there was nothing more homely than a piece of somewhere else.

Lance didn’t understand what he meant.

When he had first seen the house, the first day they moved in when Keith and Lance had come over to help them unpack, he had asked if they wanted him to scrub it off. Adam had laughed at the mere thought.

 _“One day,”_ he had said, _“you’ll understand. A home isn’t just made by the people who live in a house. The people who lived before, and the people who will live after, and all the people in between—they make it a home.”_

Lance had bought them an anchor-shaped keychain the next day. Adam attached it to his house key.

In the wintertime, Keith and Lance would drive up to Shiro and Adam’s house, and the four would shovel the driveway together. The first time they had done that was also the first time Lance had ever had a snowball fight. Apparently growing up in the Caribbean deprived him of a lot of snow themed activities.

 _“Next year,”_ Keith had panted, nose rosy and skin blossoming with heat as they stepped back inside the house. _“We’re so sledding down this hill.”_

Next year, Keith came home one day with a sled. The propped it up against the wall between their beds. It was just small enough to not touch the window.

The hill is steeper now than Lance remembers it being. Like a ninety degree angle that goes straight up forever. One patch of ice for his tires to slip on and it would send him barreling back to the beginning. He wishes he had a pirate ship to float him up to the top of the hill.

The road is dark, it being 21:23 in the evening, but there’s one house that's covered in red and blue Christmas lights, and they reminds Lance of the very first motel he had camped out in. It feels like an eternity ago, now.

Adam and Shiro don’t have lights up around their house. Probably because Keith and Lance hadn’t had time to come over and put them up between the last of their classes and The Day We L _eve_. Regardless, there are lights emitting a warm glow from inside the front window. Lance’s breath catches in his throat.

_He’ll be home for Christmas after all._

He turns his car crookedly into the driveway, not bothering to straighten out before throwing it into park. Then he sits there, staring at the front door. Would Keith even be happy to see him?

He had kept the fact that he was all alone this Christmas to himself for a reason, maybe Lance being here would just frustrate him. He had practically begged Lance to get on his flight to Cuba— _“Don’t be ridiculous Lance. Kosmo is here, Shiro left the fridge stocked and he gave me his Netflix password.”_ —but all he had done was convince Lance that he couldn’t.

 _“If there’s one thing I know, Leandro, it’s that I am not this girl’s home.”_ His mamá had told him, a million years ago. _“But I will do anything I can to make it feel like one.”_  

He unbuckles his seatbelt.

Snow crunches under his boots as he makes his way up to the front door, his carry-on suitcase dragging behind him, leaving tracks across the driveway.

He stands at the door for a moment, raises his hand in a fist, lowers it, then raises it again.

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

He knocks on the door three times, just underneath the wreath that hangs proudly from the centre.

A moment later, the door swings open, revealing a very confused looking Keith. His hair is a mess and his hoodie is falling off of his shoulders. Lance pretends his heart doesn’t clench when he sees that Keith is wearing his blue scarf.

Lance can’t understand how he was ever afraid of this. How he could ever think that this would hurt. How could something that felt this right ever hurt him?

He’s built himself a stone wall, but he never considered he’d be the one to demolish it.

Lance has had enough time over the past four years to accumulate a lot of reasons why _not._ But if the past four days have given him anything, it’s infinitely more reasons _why._

He’s tired of hiding. Refuses to spend another second teetering on the edge of himself.

He was afraid of falling, but it didn’t stop him, didn’t even delay him. He fell and he fell hard, slipping in his ice skates, waiting for the wind to be knocked out of his lungs, waiting to hit the ice with a crushing _thud._

Keith stares at him, eyes cartoonishly wide, wrapped up in Lance’s scarf, and Lance realizes he’s already there. Already hit the ice.

It’s warmer than he’d ever imagined.

The second Keith sees him, it’s like his jaw unhinges. His mouth hangs open almost as wide as his eyes and his phone all but falls out of his hand.

Finally, _finally._ Lance is right where he belongs.  

“Merry Christmas, Mullet.” Lance says, and exhales for the first time in four days. _He’s home._

That seems to snap something in Keith back together, because his eyes, which had been glossed over, clear and his mouth clamps shut. “What are you _doing_ here?” Keith asks incredulously.

Lance feels the corner of his mouth twitch upwards “I had to make sure the door was locked.”

Keith shakes his head, like he’s in pain, and Lance briefly thinks he’s going to hit him, but then arms wrap around Lance’s middle, a head thudding against his collar bones as thick black hair tickles his nose. Lance didn’t realize how cold he was until he had something warm in his arms.

“You’re insane,” Keith says somewhere into Lance’s chest. “And you’re freezing cold.”

“Well, I didn’t necessarily pack my snow gear for Cuba. And I’ve been driving for the past eight hours today.” Keith shakes his head some more, pulling Lance back inside the house and shutting the door. Shutting them out from the rest of the world.

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me you we’re _driving_ all the way up here?” Keith jabs a punch into Lance’s abdomen.

Lance shrugs with one shoulder—the one Keith is not currently resting on. “Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”

“Well _duh.”_ Keith says, “it was a stupid decision.” But he hugs Lance tighter, and Lance figures he really did miss him.

“It wasn’t.” Lance says honestly, “it was the best choice I could’ve made.” Keith just shakes his head again.

Lance shoves his hands into Keith’s pockets, searching for warmth to thaw his frozen fingers. Keith chuckles at him, his head lifting from Lance’s chest to look him in the eyes. His pupils are blown wide, dark and soft and so so _warm._

“And you thought _I_ would be the one with cold hands.” He says, reaching into his own pockets and searching for Lance’s ice pellet fingers. “Now that you get to hold my hands I guess it makes sense that they’re not burning anymore.”

Lance has to pause at that. The words are familiar to him, because they bounce around his head, have been bouncing around his head for the past week. But he still doesn’t understand how Keith has heard them.

Keith finds his hands then, knotting them together with is own, and Lance has to catch his breath with how _right_ it feels. Something cold and hard knocks against the knuckles of his right hand. _Keith’s phone_ Lance realizes, forgotten and swapped for Lance’s hand.

Keith’s phone, which he had been holding when he opened the door. Keith’s phone, which had been Lance’s only portal to Keith for the past four days (minus the fourteen hours where Lance didn’t have internet). Keith’s phone, the one that names Lance as his number 1 contact, the one that  Keith would’ve pressed to his ear when listening to Lance have a panic attack. Keith’s phone; the one Lance had texted hopelessly when he had no connection to anything besides a shitty radio show.

The one that would have pinged when he walked into the coffee shop. _Help wanted, free Wifi, no public washroom,_ the signs had read.

_Free Wifi._

Lance pulls his fingers away from Keith’s for a moment to turn the phone between his fingers.

Keith smiles at him. “You’ve really got a way with words, don’t you.”

Lance’s breath hiccups. He didn’t expect Keith to get those messages until after Lance had the opportunity to say everything he needs to say first. He takes a step back, dragging  
Keith’s hands with him, holding them out between the two as he slots their fingers together.

“You read all of that.” It’s not a question. Lance’s mouth parts a little in shock, or maybe wonder, he isn’t sure.

“Mmhm,” Keith hums, barely containing the smile that wants to swallow his face. “Multiple times, Lance.”

Lance laughs at him, more of a sigh than anything else, it’s over as soon as it starts. Then Lance is pulling Keith towards him by their intertwined hands, straightening their elbows until their hands swing slightly at their sides. Their chests press together, and Lance realizes Keith’s hands are not the only warm part about him.

Keith’s eyes are staring into Lance’s, then somewhere lower, then they flit back to his eyes as soon as they leave.

“Y’know,” Keith says in his Library Voice _,_ eyes lidded and hands so, so warm. “You still have something to tell me.”

Lance nods slightly, not needing, or having the room, to move very much considering Keith is pressed up against him. “I know,” he says, because he does. Has been thinking about it for the past forty-eight hours.

He glances down at their joined hands, pulling his bottom lit into his mouth, licking his lips and clearing his throat before looking Keith straight in the eye.

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

“I love you,” he says, and feels the stars align outside the door, glowing in the reflection of the Varadero waters and Lance may not be at the water to see it, but he’s here, with the sky and the stars and the moon and he thinks that counts for something. He thinks that must mean something.

Keith smiles, wider than Lance thinks he’s ever seen him smile before, and then he’s laughing, his deep, rumbly chest laugh but this time, Lance can feel it. It bounces through his bones, echoing against his pulse and Lance doesn't think he's ever seen Keith so happy before.

Lance is laughing now, too. They laugh until they’re backed up all the way to the doorway of the living room. Keith presses Lance into the doorframe, hands up against his chest while Lance’s rest softly on Keith’s waist. Keith presses their bodies together and smiles at Lance so widely his cheeks swallow his eyes.

He shakes his head in wonder, his expression changing to one of awe. No one’s ever looked at Lance that way. Maybe there was enough home in Lance for the both of them, after all.

“I love you, too.” Keith says, and the waves crash against the beach in little puddles of melted stardust. He laughs again, a real, genuine, _wondrous_ laugh that has Lance’s head spinning. “I love you so much, you dumbass. I was driving myself crazy when you wouldn’t answer my calls.”

Lance laughs, because he was, too.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because what else can he say. “I missed you.”

Keith smiles again, breath fanning out across Lances face. “Don’t be like that, Lance.” Keith jokes, “we saw each other Thursday morning.” Lance throws his head back in laughter, knocking it against the doorframe behind him. Something is hanging up there, something green and red and Lance briefly remembers stringing something like that up there last year when he and Keith had come over to shovel.

He tilts his head back down slowly, soft eyes catching Keith’s and holding them there. Keith’s breath catches, Lance can feel it against his stomach.

Lance feels like he did four years ago, walking into his new home with a strange boy standing in the middle of it. He feels like he’s building himself a new home, sticks and stones and something else entirely cementing them together. He feels his pulse in his throat and he tries to swallow it down.

“Hey, Keith?” Lance breathes, more of a whisper. Keith nods his head in response, not looking away from Lance’s eyes. He looks tired, or drunk, or maybe still a little awestruck. Lance thinks it’s cute. He nods his chin upward at the top of the doorframe. “Mistletoe,” he say, and Keith cranes his neck to look behind him.

When he turns back to Lance, his eyes are soft and open, and Lance swears he can see all of the sky and the water and the falling stars and floating snow reflected in them.

_What are you even hiding from, Lance?_

Keith tilts his head upward, asking for Lance to meet him in the middle. With Lance’s back completely pressed against the door frame, Keith is a little shorter than him, so Lance tilts his chin downward, knocking their foreheads together.

Keith’s eyes are lidded, fixated on somewhere below Lance’s eyes, but Lance can’t stop _looking_ at him. Everything about him, finally falling into place.

Keith brushes their noses together in what must be the softest gesture Lance has ever felt and Lance feels like he’s drunk. Like he’s floating atop of the clouds with no way of getting down but he doesn’t think he needs one, anyways. The feeling in his stomach is back and for once Lance lets it stay; welcomes it, even.

He’s spent so long trying to smother the feeling, and now, he can finally give it a name.

“Keith,” he says in his Library Voice, because with the other so close, he doesn’t need to speak above a whisper. Keith nods, brushing the sides of their noses together again, eyes still lidded, still focused on somewhere that isn’t Lance’s eyes.

Lance licks his lips, and he swears he sees Keith’s pupils follow the motion. Four days of snow drifts and suddenly, it’s all worth it.

“Can I kiss you?” Lance asks.

Keith’s eyes lift to Lance’s, still half shut, lips parted slightly and Lance has to look away. The heat of Keith’s gaze and Keith’s hands and _Keith_ too much for him in this moment.

And then Keith is leaning up and pressing their lips together.

Hands find their way to either side of Lance’s face, thumbs brushing underneath his eyes. Like little pieces of the sky, falling to press feather-light kisses against him. But this time, the fallen star is real.

It’s over just as fast as it comes, Keith is leaning away, allowing his hands to drop to the sides of Lance’s neck instead. Lance has never felt so right in his life. The bricks all cemented together, all built up from nothing but not built alone. Never alone.

“Was that…?” Keith trails off, but Lance doesn’t let him finish, too busy smiling wildly and tilting their foreheads back together. He shakes his head, in a way that might be happiness or disbelief. Lance suspects it’s probably both.

 _“You’re in love, Leandro.”_ Rachel had said to him.

 _“Yeah,”_ he breathes in response to Keith and in response to Rachel. “That was…” _mesmerizing_ , Lance thinks as Keith wraps one of his hands around the back of Lance’s head.

The wind picks up outside, and through the window across the living room, Lance sees a handful of snow fall from a tree branch, glowing in the neighbour’s Christmas lights.

_Like falling blue and red stars._

…

They spend the next hour splayed across Shiro and Adam’s couch. Pillows piled beheath Lance’s head, Keith’s back pressed on top of Lance’s chest. One of Lance’s legs is thrown over the back of the couch so that Keith can lie comfortably between his legs.

It’s the warmest Lance has felt in four days.

It’s maybe the warmest he’s felt in his life.

Lance tells Keith about the drive, the red rental car with the dent in the door and the too-sweet pancakes. About Rachel and Allura and Hunk, how they all played a hand in getting him here, in getting him home. He recounts the blizzard and the screaming cars, tells him about the floating snowflakes and the falling stars and the red and blue Christmas lights.

“And all I could think about was you,” Lance says, his tongue moving without Lance having to think about it. “You as a kid, growing up all alone and I always give what I can, but this time I felt like-”

Keith turns around in his grasp, guiding Lance’s face to his own by a hand on his cheek. He presses their lips together in a sweet, closed-mouth kiss.

“You’re so good, Lance Suárez.” Keith says, searching Lance’s eyes for something. His thumb rubs across Lance’s cheek, just under his eye, it seems to be Keith’s chosen spot to caress. Like he’s tracing across Lance’s face with his eyes following his fingers.

Lance allows himself a second to breathe, he’s never looked at Keith this closely before, has never been allowed to. His eyes are darker up close.

“I swear I was a hero in another life.” Lance says against Keith’s lips. If he moved an inch, he imagines their lips would probably touch. “Some hero of some sort. Someone that saved lives.” Lance wonders which star upon which wave he has to thank for this.

Keith hums and Lance feels it against his mouth. “Someone who saved lives.” Keith agrees.

“How do you think Lance and Keith in that universe end up?” Lance asks, looking down the slope of Keith’s nose. He realizes after he asks that he’s scared of the answer. Doesn’t want to think about a universe where _this_ doesn’t exist. But Lance has spent his entire life running away from things he’s scared of. He’s tired of hiding.

“Just like this,” Keith says, with so much conviction Lance doesn’t have a choice but to believe it. “Every variation, in every universe, in every timeline,” Keith whispers, Lance feels it more than hears it. Keith reaches across Lance to find his hand dangling off the couch.

“Lance and Keith,” Keith breathes, “hand in hand.”

Lance huffs out a breath, blinking away tears he had no idea were accumulating from his eyes. It’s too much. Too close, too real, too much. Lance presses his lips fully against Keith’s, the tears falling down his cheeks but he doesn’t care; because Keith is _right._

Any universe, any timeline, any lifetime, they’d find their way back to each other.

Lance and Keith against the world.  

...

The loading graphic on Lance’s phone swoops in circles for what feels like an hour. They’re sitting on the floor, backs propped up against the couch. The fireplace is turned on, somehow actually working and not burning the house down, Lance is still amazed that Keith managed to get it to work.

Keith idly rubs the back of Lance’s hand, eyes fixated on the screen of Lance’s phone.

The loading graphic buffers, and then Luis’s smile loads into focus. Keith is (purposefully) sitting out of shot of the camera, Lance supposes it’s because he doesn’t want to impose on Lance’s family’s conversation.

“Hi Lance!” Luis yells, and there’s a rumbling that sounds like a thunderstorm on the other end of the phone. His family all piles high in shot, Luis pushing the laptop they’re using back on the table in an attempt to get everyone in view of the camera.

His parents are sitting at the kitchen table, Luis squished into their mamá side and the rest of his siblings standing behind them, leaning against the back of their chairs.

“Hi guys,” he says, waving at his family’s smiling faces. “Happy Christmas Eve.”

“How was your trip?” His papá asks “did you make it alright?” Rachel had probably told the rest of his family about the snow and the two extra days of driving. He doesn’t mind at all.

“Yeah,” he says, smiling over at Keith. Keith smiles back with a lose, happy grin that makes Lance feel dizzy. “I made it.” He squeezes Keith’s hand.

He hears someone gasp, and snaps his head back to his phone, raising an eyebrow at Marco’s gaping jaw. “Is Keith there?” Marco asks, the rest of his sibling’s faces lighting up in excitement.

“I mean,” Lance bites his lip, “the whole purpose of me coming up here was to see him. And I _am_ in his brothers house, so it would be really weird if he _wasn’t_ here.” Rachel gives him a knowing look, the question clearly written on her face.

Lance lifts his and Keith’s joined hands, tilting his phone sideways just slightly so that his family can see Keith sitting next to him. “Guys,” he says, looking intently into Keith’s eyes, smiling despite himself, he tries to pour the fire lit in his throat into Keith’s eyes. “This is Keith,” he looks back at his family’s expectant and eager faces. They all know Keith, there’s no reason for him to be reintroducing him. “My boyfriend.” Lance barely finishes before a chorus of cheers erupt from his phone.

“Congratulations!” Luis says, laughing and high fiving Marco from across the table.

“I’m proud of you, baby bro.” Veronica says, nodding at Lance.

Even his parents look happy, sharing a kind of smile that he’s only seen from them a handful of times. Most notably the hospital room when Sylvio was born.

Rachel is quiet for the most part, but Lance knows the way her mouth is puckered a little, like she’s biting the inside of her cheek. _You’re in love, Leandro._ She mouths, and this time Lance nods.

Keith is mostly silent next to him, sitting stiff and gripping onto Lance to steady himself. But every so often, Lance hears him let out a rumbly chest laugh, and Lance thinks he might be enjoying this more than he’s letting on.

“We wish you could have come home,” his mamá says, “but we’re so glad you got to Keith.”

And maybe it’s because he almost died yesterday, or maybe it’s because he’s had a lot of time to think these past four, but when he says, “I did go home,” he means it.

Keith is looking at him in wonder; like he hung the moon and hand painted the stars across the sky. He scoots closer, stretching over to peck Lance on the cheek. Rachel pretends to choke at the gesture. Veronica swats her shoulder.

Later, when his family has to hang up, and Keith and Lance are left alone again, Keith will catch Lance’s eye and pour the fire right back.

“Did you mean that?” Keith asks, sitting so close he might as well crawl onto Lance’s lap. “That you came home?”

Lance feels the waves crash against the stars, sees little falling flecks of the sky meeting the water for the first time. _Lance and Keith, hand in hand. Like falling red and blue stars._

It took him a while to figure it out, and yes, he might have taken a wrong turn or two along the way; and he might have tripped over his own feet more than once, but Lance came home. Can _finally_ give a meaning to the gift he had given to a little girl so many years ago.

 _Home is not a place,_ because he’s found more than one to build himself up from.

 _And home is not a person,_ because there are people in his life who have come and gone, but there are even more who have _stayed._ Who he hopes will stay, in this lifetime and the next.

 _And home is not a broken window,_ because the window in the first motel wasn’t broken, it kept the cold out. _It’s not a fireplace_ that Keith could figure out in one morning even though it took Lance almost four years. _Home is not an anchor,_ because the people who have been, and all the ones who will be after, will have to learn to build for themselves.

Lance nods at Keith, his throat lit on fire in a way he’s come to know well. A way he's come to know means warmth rather than burning. “I meant it.” he whispers. “I’m home.”

Home is a _feeling._

And Lance thinks he’s found it.

**Author's Note:**

> you made it!! 
> 
> Thank you for coming on this ridiculous journey with me, I am so so happy that I finally get to share it. 
> 
> If you enjoyed, comments and kudos are always appreciated and if you wanna see more from me, or if you just wanna come say hi, you can find me on [tumblr.](https://oceaes.tumblr.com/)


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